Elena Copuzeanu address home Bucharest, Romania, Grigore
Ionescu street 63,
Experiment
fashion paintings http://touchpaintingtecstile.blogspot.ro/
Studies, Masterclass
and workshops:
The Academy of Fine Arts
in Painting and Video Art, and Masterclass
with Lawrence Weiner, in Conceptual Art and
Multimedia, Maastricht, Holland
Workshops in Theatre and
Acting with Valeria Frabetti from LaBarraca Theatre, at Annual International Festival of Theatre, also
in Actor’s Art workshops by Teodora Campineanu, Ion Arcudeanu, Mihai Malaimare,
Bucharest
Workshops in Contemporary Dance
and Authentic Movement by Milli Biterli and Olive Bieringa at Impultanz
Wiena; workshops by Ivo Dimchev, Meg Stuart & Philipp Gehmacher at ExploreDanceFestival,
Bucharest at WASP ( Working Art Space Project ); in HIP-HOP
with Brandon 'Peace' Albright at WASP (Working Art Space Project) ;
workshops in Dramaturgy, Choregrapy,
Improvisation, Body Mind
Centering at National centre of
Dance and ZonaD in Bucharest
by Carmen Cotofana, Vava Stefanescu, Mihai Mihalcea, Florin Fieroiu, Eduard
Gabia, Cosmin Manolescu; workshops in Contact Improvisation
with Berndt Knappe; workshops in Politics of Performance with Bojana Cvejic, in
Dramaturgy by Gina Serbanescu and Igor Dobricic; workshops with David Bloom
at Zona D, Bucharest; in Dance Composition with
Gabriella Maiorino at ZonaD; at IPA Bucharest Interantional Performance Art Festival,
I took part to the public presentations of the IPA workshops that have taken
place in Bucharest, at the Pionierul Factory
( the final presentation of the princip of works Rocio Boliver, Jurgen
Fritz, Alexandra Zierle & Paul Carter); menthorship and workshop with/by Mette Edvardsen and
Isabelle Schad at WASP ( Working Art
Space Project )Bucharest.
‘’Elena
Copuzeanu is an artist with early background in Visual Arts. I met her a few years ago when she started making
presentations on stage, presentations who routinely crossed the borders of
contemporary dance and performance. The presentations themselves, especially on
National Center of Dance scene in Bucharest, were obviously primarily under the
sign of authenticity and full of motivation, coming most from the area of
happenings. In those constructions and intelligent environments she often cleverly using video techniques
mixed with dance moments. As a dancer and performer she has a special physical
quality, an aproach in which compromises are excluded, an incredible ability to
improvise, a certain , energy, amplitude and last but not least deep
concentration. Elena is a mature artist, but fully justified her shift towards
performance and dance it completes the interesting, prolific and charming
artistic profile. ‘’ (Cosmin Manolescu is
dancer choreograph,artistic director at Studio ZonaD - Paradis Serial and
executive director Gabriela Tudor Foundation Bucharest)
Drawings and Video Expositions
( selection ) 2006–2014
'Deep black' at Cultural Centre Berlin, Germany
curated by Adriana Popescu
'Toward black' at Dalles
Gallery , Bucharest, curated by Mihai Oroveanu
'To designate' at Mogosoaia Pallace curated by Erwin
Kessler and Doina Mandru
‘Sintetic
Charcoal’ at ICR, Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest
curated by Tania Radu and Corneliu Antim
'Filmed
faces', video-experiment & performance at Simeza Gallery, Bucharest curated by Erwin Kessler
‘Fallen
man in woman’- Fasion collection and drawing exhibition at Galateca
Gallery, Bucharest curated by Iulia Gorneanu and Alin Galatescu
‘Virtual me’ interactiv video project in within the framework of PlatformaX at WASP ( Working Art Space Production) Bucharest, curated by Olivia Nitis http://www.imagofactory.ro/artisti/elena3/elena3.html
Dans Performances (selection) 2010- 2014
'TO STOP' performance/intervention
in public spaces in different locations in Bucharest
Within the framework of Eduard Gabia and Maria Baroncea
Choreographic Project 'Easy Wendsday '
at CNDB
(National Centre of
Dance Bucharest ) and during the Occupy 'CNDB, I made series of Dance
Performances projects :
'Lady in red' dans
performance
'Honey the cat' dans
performance
'Beautiful
morning' dans performance
'Eat the eg' video/dans performance
'L'omage' video/dans
performance
'Study of
motion and body1' video/dance performance
'Study of
motion and body2' video/dance
performance
'Move the
body1' performance
'Move the
body2' performance
'Protest' performative instalation within Occupied CNDB
'Fragmentarium' dans performance
'In the park' video-performance within the framework
of Occupied CNDB
'DORNA'
dans performance at Visual Introspection
Centre in Bucharest
‘Postvanity/postSyncron’ performative
instalation at Studio Hall, National Theatre
Bucharest
'FRAGMENTARIUM
' interdisciplinary and
interactive project suported by the AFCN Bucharest, at Stirbei Palace
‘Self
employment’ public intervention at commercial centre Mall, Bucharest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTdElLCzfI
‘Arbitrary
associations’- Dans performance/experiment with Vlaicu Golcea, musician and Mugur Grosu poet, at Imbold Gallery, Bucharest
2014
‘No story.You’ Open
research and performance with Bernd Knappe at Silencio Pub, Bucharest
‘The silence Dans’
Dance Performance within the
framework of Museums Night at George Enescu Museum in Bucharest with musician
Irinel Anghel
‘Method of elimination’ production
Thomas Steyeart at WASP (Working Art Space Production) at Explore
Dance festival Bucharest
‘The
fall of rebel Angels 9’ (
with Georgiana Dobre and Bogdan Draganescu ) project by Catherine Galasso at ZonaD, Bucharest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGhIClIwxOY&list=UU0fsG3asyHH60hBZRCVjfkw
‘
What you see is not what you looking at’ and ‘Let’s
do Real time Composition’ DansPerformance at Platforma Space and Performative Installation at CIV within the framework of IPA Bucharest Interantional
Performance Art Festival,Bucharest
‘Virtual me’ interactive
video project within the framework of PlatformaX at WASP Bucharest http://www.imagofactory.ro/artisti/elena3/elena3.html
‘NOW’ Performative
installation within the framework of Arts in Bucharest Festival at
Simeza Gallery http://youtu.be/g2pgbSmC5bU?list=UUQJLcZQlN2UOXIjQH8FusJQ
Awards for Drawings Exhibitions by Artist Union Bucharest; for
intervention and performance in public spaces L’Omage de Mandela, by News Paper
Ziua, Bucharest; for Performative Instalation NOW by Artist Union, Bucharest.
Drawing works in privat collection at Contemporary
Museum of Art Bucharest, Anixixs Galerry in Baden, Joe Felchlin Galery in
Zurich, New York
‘’Elena is
a highly passionate person about her art
projects, and what is characterizes first of it, is her dedication. Because it
has the courage and generosity to follow several ways, mix art languages, and to overcome the boundaries, to provoke, to
experiment. In her performances you can feel
energy, complexity, improvisation, ludic, pleasure, surprise,
communication with the public. She communicate directly . Sometimes go to the
limits. Her limits and also audience limits.She likes to play with limits
without reaching for the real acts of
cruelty, only small ironic, subversive pricks that ends with humor or a dance
done for real.’’ Ioan Radu dancer and performer
Biography and
detailed statement including process of creations, motivations :
I am visual
artist, dancer and performer. I started my performances during my studies at
Fine Arts Academy in Bucharest. Critical
intervention in public spaces using my own body (and trying to embodied understanding
of the world) and the language of publicity and advertising (like video/film and posters ) where my scores and my tools. In parallel I
developed series of works in mixed media on paper, and specific for this
approach, black and white contrast and big sizes. Till now, I had exposed them in several
personal exhibition, the last one was in 2013 along with a fashion experiment,
at Galateca Galery , located in Bucharest ( a gallery
interested in new design artists ).
Also, like 2 different extents of drawing practices, I was invited to make big graffiti works in a
private space in Bruxelles, and I had a
personal curiosity - during last years -, to develop the practices of
traditional - canonical - religious paintings. One time also, I started to made
performance installations included video and multimedia/ interdisciplinary
instruments. In last two years I developed an experiment in fashion paintings ,
collaborating with people from fashion design field , intending to understand
if and how can we deal with
uncommercial imagery in paintings mixed
with a comfortable-cozy shapes of the clothes. And how can we influence each
other in order to create new shape, new concepts both in fashion and paintings.
The body considered like space of the work, languages of
dance, questioning movements, fashion paintings, video tools, and my personal
skills brought me very closer to contemporary dance performance, right now the
most appropriate way to express understandings-feelings-concerns.
It is evident, starting to describe my working processes
that, the practice of drawing, painting (religious, fashion or graffiti) it was
and still it is important, from the point of view of the ‘handmade’
implications and not just that, and I’ll try to explain: It Is also about the presence of the body and
the responses that it gives. It is about
‘real time composition’. It is about something that I don’t want to
repeat. It is about something that I
have had discovered first, when I began with big, black and white drawing, inside my
studio, also later in fashion paintings, and last but not least also in canonical paintings ( after I had
learned the special technique). It is about my moving of the hand, and how I
feel the connection between the hand, the tools and the surfaces. Every time
(even if I have some ideas, or if I have made some sketches before ) from the
very beginning, I discovered that the real time interacting with and within my
body, my hands, my tools, my state of mind, offered me a priceless material to work
with, alongside, extra, and in addition to my ideas , to my imagery and to my
scores. Never the less, this ‘presence’, this real time composition, gave me a special feeling of plenitude, and
satisfaction that I decided to do not censored it, but contrary to take it like
an important mark of the way of working. So, in my visual territory I started
with big surfaces in black and white, where I involved literally my tow hands,
the entire body (not in the sense that Pollock did with his works) but in the sense
of capacities of the body to feel , to empathize, to understand , to be concentrate and present
and to respond in a creative way, or
unexpected way, in that very moment when I am involved in my process of
working. So I understand that my body can informed me, through my sensation of
my skin, touching the paper, handled the charcoal, even smelling the powder of
charcoal, and can influence the process of working, the imagery, the final
shape of the object. So listening the body, and letting be informed by it, is
important mechanism of my way of working. Because I was working with big sizes of paper, large gestures, hitting
and stroking, breaking, disrupting, scratching, erasing, manipulate the dark
volumes, realise the light, disorganizing and reorganize long traces,
serpentines, cracking with white and
black blocks on the immaculate surfaces, feeling with my fingers, my palms the
slide of dark and unctuous charcoal on paper, seeing how from moving of fingers and hands, a huge lively surface can be build, it was obviously
very difficult when I had to “accept” and incorporate the details, delicacy and
continuous thin traces, the orders, the system, the obedience, the calm and
detach, the serenity of iconic paintings ( it was a technique that I choose to
learn by ‘O ‘, and in the very proper
manner ). I am not at all concerned with
a kind of coherence, like still or imaginary (brand image). Because it was
important to gain the experience, and to embody it, to give my personal
response to this provocation, to provoke my limits, to understand my nature,
and intimate desires. And fallow pleasure of doing, finding the connection
between mind and body and movements like response. From one moment I realised
that we can unbalance that fragile equilibrium between what we looking and what
we can do, no matter what.
Because during my studies I had initiated interventions in
public places, and I had continued with the happening practices, but also
because I am addicted to music and
theatre, I decided to explore the field of dance and I had alternative
professional dance course in contemporary dance techniques as ‘Authentic
Movement’, ‘ Contact Improvisation’,
‘Real time composition’, ‘ Body Mind Centering’, ‘Feldenkrais Method
‘,’Alexandre Technique’. (Very important
parts of this courses I’ve toked at National Centre of Dance in Bucharest, the
place where I started also proposed and developed my own solo pieces.) So I
discovered my intimate and profound desires in working or achieving more
knowledge about dance history and culture, and my curiosity of studying and
practising dance incredible increased. So I have had learn about those how
changed the shapes and content of modern
and contemporary dance, the dancers, the
theorist s and philosophers as well, and I become addicted to
Bojana Cvejic , Andre Lepeki J and one of my favourite choreograph artist
for this moment is my fellow citizen Florin Flueras. The very first thing that
I had recognize and regained starting to dance or to move my body in space, it
was the pleasure. I started full of exuberance to writing down series of
discovered ideas and principals of being in dance, or in moving, in front or
not of audience. I became conscious of proprioceptors. .. I discovered the
second territory of my abilities to be concentrate, present, dedicate and full
of joy. A territory where I can play with rules, go further, having confidence,
listening and being alive. I mentioning this, maybe too much sentimental experiences, because I am sure that are
composing, integrating, organizing important substance of my materials,
of my concerns, and are also important
part of my motor and motivations, researches
and artistic articulations. The second important part another than I
written up, and different from being by yourself in your studio, it was the relation with the
audience. Sophisticated questions
concerning the act of delivery in front of audience a personal experience
without “packaging” it, and the
importance of the place itself where performance is going (all elements that
are composing a space and can inform you
as well and influence your performativity )started suddenly to be very present
in my interests. The intersection between ritual, dance and performance. Performance of everyday life. The intersection
between dance and performance, all of those themes bring my attention on what
‘dance studies’ could bring to ‘performance studies’, and ‘performance studies’
to ‘dance studies’. And I will quote from an early interview of André Lepecki
on this topic to be more precise describing
my directions of research : “Dance studies has traditionally been
preoccupied with movement, and how is it that one can capture and interpret
movement in different choreographic techniques and compositional practices.
Performance studies opens up the possibility for dance studies to think
otherwise about dance. Is dance only about movement or is dance about many
other factors that may or may not be even on stage at the moment of
performance? Thinking in terms of identity politics, racial studies, critical
theory, postcolonial conditions, are ways in which performance studies… or
modes in which performance studies have been working for a while that could
actually help or inform dance studies to step a little bit outside this scopic
regime established by modernism that still, I feel, influences dance studies.
The way dance studies can contribute to performance studies is by this emphasis
on materiality and this understanding from within. Most of dance studies, at
least in the United States, are informed by dancers and choreographers and
knowing from the body, how is that the body can actually inform theory, inform
an understanding of choreographic practice. What dance studies can give
performance studies is a kind of knowing from within.”
So, I could say that a sort of complex way of exploring
different materials and techniques, embody and responding as well, define my process of working and my
motivation.
Also, in the last
period I was concerned with and involved
in, social manifestation, social changes, events, different context of cohabitations, trying to
understand if and how my works, can
influence in better, or bring something
good in social places; if and in which sense my artistic works are
necessary for a better situation in my social environment. If and how, the “common peoples” can reflect
themselves in my works or can be reflected by the works as well. Actions like volunteering, occupy, social
commitment started to be relevant for my process and approach.
The capacity of the body to feel and express joy and
pleasure when I experimenting some
practices, the inner desires to go further, to find something new, which
sometimes is strange and difficult and
on the other hand, the perfect integrations in social environment, decant,
define and give me a real time direction
in my artistic activities.
