DAN VEZENTAN: All We Can Eat

18.11.2023 - 03.02.2024

Sandwich - Malmaison

​

Utopian harvesting tools - a proposal that seems surprising if we think of the ultra-accessibility of the food supply we now enjoy on a daily basis. Wooden crates and woven baskets instead of a click-n-deliver service: an invitation to slow down and cultivate our patience? Or, possibly, an all-understanding overview of modern food production and its (still) detectable origins in the act of harvesting. 

 

For his second exhibition at Sandwich, Dan Vezentan brings out his series of Harvesting Structures, an ongoing series including models, renders, sketches, and monumental works that, at their core, pay tribute to agricultural workers. His structures, however, go beyond the realm of food and consumption and are actually living mechanisms that embed proofs of various cultures. Different containers, in various materials (wood, twigs, rope, brass, etc.), traditional or not, from different parts of the world, used for certain types of harvest - each contains within themselves a certain rhythm of life, an actual speed or slowness, a certain amount of greed or decency. How big is our container, in which we gather and gather and are expected to accumulate?

 

These Harvesting Structures continuously rotate and gravitate - towards the harvest, or each other, or us, the final consumer - alluding to the specifics of a planet, our own, or a new one to be conquered. But beyond their shape, their biggest utopian skill is that they never waste any of their hard-worked content - every dropped piece is immediately gathered by the next rotation. A no-waste aspiration, perhaps? 

Dan Vezentan

Born in 1978 in Seini, lives and works in Bucharest 

 

Dan Vezentan's practice revolves around the zootechnic and agricultural universe, the processes of domestication of plants and animals, focusing on rural technology. Solo exhibitions include: Water, Food, Shelter, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2018); L’Anatomia del Cavallo, Kunsthalle Bega Box, Timișoara & Why Does The Earth Bear Us?, Antipa Natural History Museum, Bucharest (2020); Feed Me/ No Gravity at Sandwich, (2016). 

 

Other recent projects include: (in 2023) Culturi Agricole. The Agriculture in Modern and Contemporary Art in Romania, Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest; Embodied Knowledges, Shifting Grounds, Biennale Jogja 17, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Ivan Patzaikin Memorial. Public project, Tulcea, Romania; From place to community, from community to place, Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania; Haptic Challenges. Visuality and Experiment in Contemporary Art.16 Portraits, Cetate Arts Danube, Romania; RAD Sculpture Park. Caro, Bucharest; Responsive Matter, Cazarma U, Timișoara, Romania; Heartbeat 22. MNAC acquisitions, MNAC, Bucharest; Ferdinand. Kulturverein Hotel Kovel, Oberammergau, Germany; (in 2022) Contemporary Snapshot / Traditional Timeline, M2M/ Muzeul 2 META - Slon, Romania; Circular Tradition. Connected to The Nature, The Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest; (in 2021) Heartbeat 20, new entries in the MNAC Collection, Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara; (in 2019) Balancing between The Particular & The Universal, BOZAR, Brussels; Garage Sale, Sandwich, Bucharest; (in 2018) The Great Romania & China Friendship Cafeteria, C5+86 Space Beijing, China.

​

​

​

​

​

 

​