Ştefan Constantinescu (b. 1968 in Bucharest) is a visual artist and a film director. In 2010 he participated in the Bucharest Biennale 4, where he presented the installation An Infinite Blue. In the same year The Seductiveness of the Interval was remade and exhibited at The Renaissance Society Museum in Chicago. In 2009, he represented Romania at The Venice Biennale, with the films Passagen and "Troleibuzul 92". In 2009 he co-directed with Julio Sotto the film My Beautiful Dacia, a portrayal of Romania`s transition from Communism to Capitalism through the story of the Dacia automobile, an emblem of Communist Romania. The film’s premier was at the Montréal World Film Festival and in 2010 the film was awarded the second prize at the Documenta Madrid Festival. In 2008 he conceived The Golden Age for Children, a pop-up book about the last 20 years of the communist regime in Romania. In 2007, Ştefan had a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. Selected group exhibitions: The social critique 1993-2005, Kalmar Konstmuseum Sweden, 2009; Dada East? Romanian Context of Dadaism, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2008; indirect speech, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 2006. He is currently working on a series of fiction films 7 Nuances of Grey and the group project The Iron Curtain, a box of memory. Ştefan Constatinescu lives and works in Stockholm and Bucharest.
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Ĺ&#x;tefan constantinescu an infinite blue This installation is a re-enactment of my first experience as a painter working on commission at the Army General Headquarters. The paintings and the photographs reflect on my first interaction as a young man and artist with the authority system. The autumn of 1986 at the age of 17, I was enrolled in the army, 150 Km south of Bucharest. Because I had an uncle who defected to Sweden, I was enrolled in a disciplinary unit actually designed for soldiers and army personal with disciplinary issues. I was working at a mill carrying bags of flour all day long. It was hard, working 12 hours a day and cleaning the place after. My mother was desperate and called on all her connections to help me move out of there. Having graduated from an art college, my mother's relations managed to obtain a transfer for me at the Army General Headquarters as an official painter's apprentice. The main task was to paint a series of murals depicting scenes from Romanian history, starting with the founding fathers and ending with Nicolae Ceausescu. The work was under the supervision of master painter Ghelu Horia and the team members were Corina, the master's assistant, and myself. Corina was the one who painted most of the composition while the master focused on the portraits. Because I was just an apprentice, I would wash the paint brushes, prepare the backgrounds and sometimes paint minor characters. For each scene we would first make a small lay out that the commissioners would correct. The head of the commission, was general Ilie Ceausescu the dictator's brother. He would often come and check on our work in progress. He was a quiet man who kept to himself most of the time. He would walk through the room and whistle to himself as he inspected the paintings. During his work visits he was often accompanied by a couple of other generals and colonels. Their comments were very direct and precise. We weren't allowed to use green, because it was considered to be a fascist color, or black which symbolized death. These were some of their comments: "The woman on the right looks Chinese, change her face." or "The horse is badly painted, as if it was made of stone. Too much grey." The most difficult part was painting Ceausescu's portrait: the space between his eyes turned out rather large making him look mentally challenged. That is why the three of us were terribly worried that our artistic inability might be interpreted as an act of sabotage.
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 109 x 148 cm
The light is too gray and chalk like. Insist on the blocks. This woman is too dark, she looks like a mixed race. The little girl`s face is ugly.
She has a Chinese face. You still need to work on the portraits.
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas,100 x 100 cm
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm
Congratulations, master!
Careful, this one is not standing straight. Green is not a suitable color.
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm
A bit too dark. The bodies are well done.
The ceiling is badly painted. You need to keep working on the library and on the curtains.
An Infinite Blue, oil on canvas, 35,5 x 55 cm
The shelves are empty. The ambiance is too sad. The shop assistant`s face is ugly.
Courtesy of GaleriE8, London, lokal_30 Gallery, Warsaw and Waterside Project Space, London.
The title of this installation - An Infinite Blue - is inspired by a famous song, emblematic for the 80's in Romania. The lyrics of the song convey the same felling of hope and ideological optimism as the seven paintings. In my artistic practice I often work with personal testimonies, that add new layers of meaning to an already known story. For example The Archive of Pain (2000) is a video installation and book that tells the story of former political prisoners in Romania between 1945 -1965 and The Golden Age for Children (2008) is an autobiographical artist book about my childhood during the Communist regime in Romania.