 So I just first want to thank everyone for coming and thank the Renny collection For working with us on the Renny collection speaker series, which has been going for five years now. So We're very excited tonight to Have Mirce Cantor here to give a talk about his work And his exhibition is opening at the Renny collection this weekend so The reflective work of Romanian artist Mirce Cantor is the subject of this exhibition opening at the Wingsang Renny collection at Wingsang. It's his first solo presentation in Canada But his work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at institutions throughout the world including the Tate Modern The Center Pompadou in Paris the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City in 2011 He was awarded the prestigious pre-Marcel Duchamp given to an outstanding young artist working in France So I also just want to mention that The viewing of his exhibition will be taking place on Wednesdays and Saturdays Throughout the duration of the exhibition and if anyone wants to register for a tour for the exhibition You can go to the Renny collection website, which is www.rennycollection.org And the tours of the exhibition are led by interns from Emily Carr and UBC who take plate who Have been taking part in the Wingsang internship program, which has also been running for five years So I just wanted to mention that if anyone has any other questions you can ask me after the talk as well So please join me in welcoming Mirce Cantor Good evening everybody Well, she did the introduction so I start directly I am happy that you came for this presentation and I Will start well, I with this still image. It's a it's a still image from a movie that I saw recently that Maybe But it goes after a while now like this, okay So it's a film. It's called Call me of Senoriku. It's about the team master Japanese famous team master and it's a updated version of what we call the the book of tea and The film is very beautiful, but I like it the way how he Mentioned step by step the revelation of the beauty In the the way of how he should be in in life Applied so from the fact how you will drink the tea. How will you? build a room for drinking the tea so How he would choose the cup for a certain Ceramist so I like it this as an introduction to my speech tonight Just to remind you these legends will grow from the object I choose because as an artist I think it's very important what we choose and what we choose When we start to do art I Am telling you this because you will notice in my practice that there are various mediums that I use I am not attached to a particular one. I use photography I use sculpture I use Installation and I am telling you that I'm use I'm using all these mediums to make art It's not I am making sculpture. I make art So let's start This is a work that I did in 2000. I Was in in France. I just arrived in France. I quit Romania and it's a big photography About I know I have the centimeters measurements. It's like two two meters per one thirty seven centimeters And in fact, it's a it's called all directions It's a it's supposed to be for a group show in New York and my visa was denied at that time because they consider I'm a potential immigrant so I I wanted to to participate though in that exhibition and I Wanted to make a performance. So I made the hitchhike outside Nantes where I studied and I wrote on the cardboard all the heaven But I found after a while that writing heaven like hitchhiking for America the big dream, etc It is too literal too banal So then I I change it for a blank card and I say this is all the direction You should go wherever you want not a certain place This is a serious of Photography it's called shortcuts. I will show you like this. It's a triptych and It was shot in my hometown in Romania in 2004 and What interested me the Idea of the shortcut that is very close in my very strong in my practice how We as a human Cross different parts in urban areas but this shows a certain affinity of Our behavior, you know, we always try to avoid certain things Even though we have the precise direction that is marked like official direction and I like it this that shows a certain flexibility of the of the human spirit that is applied in the urban area It's just to show how they look like This work is was my first solo show in New York at my gallery and it's called the second step and What I did in the whole gallery I poured concrete cement and The whole gallery was in dark So you would have light only when you open the door and you would see this step and in fact It's a nail Armstrong step the step on the moon. So it will be enlightened by the Earth light. No, it was this idea of Creating Desire for something that we would never be able to touch because this image we all know was shot in 69 and it was so media ties but we never had a Concrete feeling of it. We never touch it like the stars on the in Hollywood, you know the The mark of the stars the hands on the steps So I had this idea that we should really see how it would have looked the concrete in concrete this mark And why concrete because I started at that time to be preoccupied in materials that are very specific to our Our time no when Augustus came to Rome. He said that I Found Rome in bricks and I left it in marble. So the concrete is the marble of our times That's why I used the concrete This is a work that I did in San Antonio in 2007 I think seven and it's called talking mirror it's a very expensive cowboy hat that I filled with oil and In fact, you could reflect yourself Into it the idea behind this was how to very strong identity items could Annihilate each other so on one part you have the cowboy hat which all we know it's Connotated with a certain Macho power and then you have the oil and What was interesting that during the exhibition people would look into the mirror and They would touch it eventually and then spill it on the hat so for of course the museums and Galleries were very angry, but for me show this I say this appeal to to destroy things, you know involuntarily this is a series of Photography that are called the holy flowers. It was for my solo show in 2010 in The la Viva at my gallery and in fact there are weapons from the Israeli army that we borrowed and I arranged them As a kaleidoscope so that it will disappear this kind of a Aggressivity they will recall a certain I would say on relax a certain decoration from the Middle East That you that you the rosas you will you have They're almost like snowflakes So these images are not manipulated. I will show you after how they were made so no photoshop This is the way how they were presented at the Yokohama Triennale in 2011 in Berg in Germany So that's the way how they were made with two mirrors and you would have the guns under the mirrors Yeah, this is a work of William Blake, and it's called Europe supported by Africa and America and I Took it as a departure point for a big exhibition that was held in Naples in Italy about the bar rock in 2011 the curator the director of the museum invited me for doing the commission for this exhibition and I took it as a departure point. So I Said look I would like to make a paraphrase of William Blake's etching 18th century And I did this photography But I changed America to Asia so the title of the work is Europe supported by Africa and Asia Of course because of the whole economical process and change through the century That Europe is much more supported by Asia and Africa rather than America this is a puzzle a mirror puzzle That That has the shape of the Map of Israel it was my second show in my gallery in 2010 and The idea was that For those who were in Israel the idea of the territory, which is very strong and the very Very connotated is The idea of the borders of the Property Very important. So I told them that I would like to make a map of Israel Out of the mirror so that you could replace each of the part which is missing with other part that is missing on the other other Parts of the same map. So you would doesn't matter What you you replace the the puzzle is the same the land is the same It's called one piece the same it can be pieces a piece or pieces a element It was also very much related to the the fact that you can reflect yourself into the mirror. So Once you take the piece of puzzle in your hand you have this Self-reflection so that means that the land is Formed by by the people. No, so you you manipulate it in a way Unpredictable future This is a lightbox that you will see here at Renny collection It's It's a very simple Thing, I mean the idea of the future started to preoccupy me around 2004 of how we try to fix things to predict things to think that I think Unpredictable future the future. It is it is unpredictable per se. You cannot predict. I mean we try to predict it, but I Wanted to make it like a haiku poem in which these two words would annihilate One each other This is a wall drawing that you also seen in the exhibition here at Renny It's called chaple In fact, it's a barbed wire made out of my fingerprints dipped in typographic ink the idea beyond beyond this Chaple it was related to the The border the limit of the delim do you hear me? I don't know because okay I The the artist body as a As a limit as a ultimate limit in making art, but more contextualized into the Today's world where you have all these biomedical things that Are more and more emerging in our lives. So this work started to be Related when I started to come after 9 11 in United States and you started to get the fingerprints and then the retina and the eyes so It's it's something that really stressed me at the beginning and then I said I should do a work out of that So we all know that barbed wire means security means protection So it's very controversial controversial but I said if The CIA would have my fingerprints that I want to make it publicly so everybody can have it So that's why I make it like a while drawing in the exhibition Space Well, this is a work. It's the first time I'm showing in a public presentation because I just discovered it I made it when I was 19 years old in the high school and it's called the portrait of my grandmother and It's interesting because I have already This fingerprint thing, but without any connotation in fact, it's a very small work It's something like that and it's a How to say it's a dry print. It's a dry print of a model that my grandmother used to make and I just Pass it under a pressure under I know how it caught it and then I just added my two fingerprints one in black and one in white also Now that I look at it, it will recall the whole idea of the rosas. No the shape of Then I developed this Chaplet Chaplain which means prayer beans No That you use many religions has no from Christianity Buddhism Islam They have this kind of prayer bean So I like it that with your fingerprints you are making this kind of prayer beans This is rainbow. It's it's based on the same idea. I just use the The colors of the rainbow in order to make it on on a glass So it's transparent This is called color silent it was A solo show that I did in Germany in a gallery in Berlin Yonan and in fact, we bought a German police car and we Reverted the siren inside the car. We place it with the sound and with the light so you wouldn't Hear the sound you will just see the lies But you wouldn't know from where they come If you are not very attentive because the windows were quite dark This was related to the Relativity of of the danger of the of the authority of the violence this work is called Nido in Italian which means nest and in fact, it's a ping-pong table That has rearranged the the nets the middle part in order to form a nest so The world would look like this And then you have full eggs in the middle and on the ground You would have just the eggshells empty eggshells that they had to change every week Because people would walk on it this was This was made in Rome in 2007 and At my gallery there it was related to the idea of the Conflict and violence and protection in the same time. So All we know is that a ping-pong match is about eliminating the other So based on this idea, I wanted to reshape the ping-pong table so that you would create a safety area in which Those who are are eliminated you step on them So is this kind of who detains the power who can step on the head of the others? It was a very strong experience in the exhibition because people would walk on it They would crack the eggs shells Fortunately we were in Italy where they have a lot of pasta. So no problem for the eggs this is a Photo performance that I did in 2005 or six I think It's called I sell my free time and I went to the market in Romania and let's just put that Bored on which I say that I sell my free time the idea of selling the time it was related to the Unity the value of what we have as a immaterial value that we We can spend no because in English you have this expression. We spend time we spend money So the fact of selling your time is like you buy through your time Other things. I mean when you work It it was this idea that you you don't earn money you buy things through your time That was the basic idea. It's like Time No money cost time and I had an Advertising in some Belgian newspapers and then Dutch in which we reverted this and said Time cost money so to revert. What is the interest of? It's not the money that is important is your time as a capital That you spend I did the same this year in Tokyo in Tukiji they were laughing Yes, this is a work that I did in 2008 for my touring show in Britain In Bristol in Oxford and in Camden in London and in fact the departure point was To reconsider some handcrafts from north of Romania in which you have a region north of Romania, which is called Maramuresh and Where you still have a very lively tradition of wood carving and building the houses in Wood so I went there and I discovered a very rich rich rich and still live culture and The gates there were there are many gates in front of the houses That are decorated with various Christian or pagan Symbols and most of them relate to the idea of the tree of life so I I went there and I collaborated with some artisans and asked them to carve a gate of me For me, but I would replace all their symbols by the shape of the DNA So I made the design of the gate. I made the drawing and we went there and they carved this gate And then I cover it with 24 karat gold foil. So all the gate is Covered in gold This was in Shanghai in 2010 at the World Expo next to the Chinese pavilion. This was in Paris in Grand Palais Yes Back to the DNA so from that exhibition on I started to make researches around the what is the DNA what is the idea of Genetical manipulations so one poetic approach for this issue Is this work which is called the DNA keys and in fact there are DNA columns made out of kisses of 12 girls from 12 different zodiac signs But it's not a public performance. You see just the finer wall drawing But now you will have the privilege to see the making of because I'm showing it So this this is back to what I told you at the beginning. I am using Sculpture. I'm using Lipstick in order to make art. So for me the important of the thing was to To see a certain expression based on the necessity of the subject matter not And why I didn't make it publicly because I think that it would have turned in something very I Don't know amusing and something very funny and You know, I just didn't want it. I wanted to have the final result so you can see a Beautiful wall drawing made out of kisses. It is not even important that are 12 women I mean, it's nice to have a number because I am very much Interested in a Certain harmony a certain Inherent rule of how the things are made for instance the golden ratio I'm using very much the golden ratio in my work because I think that there are certain things that You you have to control In that way in order to make them Happen, of course, it's a long preparation Before they would make the kisses on the wall Because they have to follow a line. They have to see how often they have to put the lipstick on their lips. So It's not easy But at the end you have this This is in Bucharest in the Contemporary Museum in Bucharest in Romania. This was in Germany These are about I don't know 150 160 inch feet Four meters It's quite high is this high seven future gifts Again the idea of the concrete. This was my major soul show in Hungary in 2008 and The Hungary has a long tradition with concrete. So I I've got In contact with a very very very very good craftsmen in concrete. So That we work out for this gift and it's a beautiful exhibition space in which it's actually Sculpture hall it meant to be at the beginning of the century the idea of the of the gift of the Present came out as a With my first kids, you know the Christmas and the family what is in the gift what and I Wanted to develop it into something Immaterial I mean that's why I Choose just to have the ruben of the gift and not the gift in itself And you have it on the different sizes because I like it that you can Pass into it and then for the smaller one you just can hold it in your hands so once again the the concrete this material that is very connotated And not marble or plastic or whatever Is the idea of the surprise the Unpredictability that I have mentioned earlier in the in the light box then this year I had the show in Italy in my gallery in Rome and I decided to make Another set of gifts, but only in one scale also because the gallery is not very big and I Wanted to make a black in black Marquina marble Which is very hard to carve and they are in one piece and black white karara marble and then the concrete ones so I like it this Connotation of black white gray like the the triptych that you have Here I mean as we are talking about future gifts, you know, you have this connotation in Visualize that black is something that it's Bad no, it's something that it's not pleasant and then the white of course so to have this Preciousness and also but it's interesting to see them one next to each other and When I show it in in Rome it was Interesting how people related because it was white Marble and many of them they like it the concrete. It was interesting. No, why? So they are in one piece of Marble it's not for concrete This is a work that I made in Santiago de Compostela in Spain for a big group exhibition in public art in public space, sorry and It's called which light kills you and in fact, it's a It's a oil. It's an antique oil lamp made in terracotta On which you have this rope that will continue to other elements this star that is carved also in north of Romania and then Simplified or Still is I'd hanging tree So the rope would go in this way Which light kills you we are in Spain we must do we are in Santiago de Compostela, which is a city very important city for Christianity We had all these inquisition issues behind so I wanted to respond in a way Strongly for that particular context the rope for those who know the Santiago Cathedral it they have a kind of It's called buta fumero and they have it's it's kind of chandelier with incense in and they balance it all over the Central space of the cathedral if you look on YouTube You can see it's something very spectacular. So that rope they changing it once 20 years So I could get via the curator's mother the rope of the cathedral Who convinced the popes and the clergy that it's important commission Stranieri it's a word that I did in 2007 Stranieri, which means strangers and this quite auto reference biographical referential work for me because my grandmother used to say that you should never cut the bread with the knife because of this Christian tradition that the bread is the body of the Christ so I And then I remember that when we had wounds or we She should she had to put salt on it in order to stop the bleeding. So I made this installation in France on It's a huge huge table with 49 Baguette and knives Cut and then you have the salt like but also you have this Symbolic meaning of the salt on the on the bread That is it's meant to be hospitality know from Greece to Roman and then continuing on the tradition that you would welcome somebody's With somebody on the road with salt and on the bread to feed it Anima it's the title of this work and this was my first major solo show in Rome in 2012 and at the macro Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome and The what you see here. It's the Reduced scale of the replica of the St. Peter Basilica of the Vatican Based on the original plans of Bramante It's a very simplified version which which is built in a technique that I employed with The artisans from the north of Romania in which you don't have any nail is just assembled So you have this structure very simplified structure of the Cathedral And to which you would have Attached this puppet marionette Linked with the rope Anima in Italian means in Latin it means Wind it means soul it means something that is moving So I like it this one connotation It had to be a very strong statement to have a solo show in Rome not in an institutional context to have something very Very imposing and very Related to the context Back to the DNA. This is a work that I did in the same in the same exhibition and it's called epic fountain and in fact, it's It's a column made out of safety pin in gold Gilded in fact plated by the jeweler East in north of Italy where you have a very big chain of jewelry production So you have these safety pins In a very precise day a measure. They are based on number of P I like you this idea of safety one more time and the DNA that we talked before and how a Very simple element that is safety pin Travelled the times because safety pin as we know is the Child of the Fibula of the antique Fibula the jewelry that used to For the Romans or for the Greeks they used to to dress in us I was saying as kind of big scarf like a sari, no and they would attach it here So that's how they use use the safety pin and in the 19th century an American rediscovered and patented as a as it as we know it today so What is it is beautiful about the safety pin? I mean, it's a it's a thing that it was used for the pampers for the babies and In Italian, it's called spilla da ballia. It's a nurse needle it's something that holds things together and Making them making it in a DNA is it's something that it's like a gate. No, it's like a Because we try to to open the DNA to To manipulate it. So it's nice to find this relationship with the DNA and the safety pin So when we decide to open and when we decide to close it and how? The way how is done? I mean, you cannot see the The welding in between them. Do you have the sensation that they are floating? this was in Pompidou in my exhibition in 2012 when I had the Marcel Duchamp rise On behind you can see the video seek transit gloria mundi and on the wall is big rosette that you will have the chance to see that the rainy collection and Discover it. I don't want to talk about that now and I'll end with this still images another film that you will see at the Rainy collection. It's called wind orchestra and It is what you see here a young boy blowing over three Japanese knives This this idea of I used to make several films with with my son Very simple short video I have one that Maybe I have it here That shows him cutting the water flow of the tap from the tap with a scissor, but it's a one-second video so you hardly Stop seven seconds black then again. So it's Is this image of fragility that I try to underline through very simple means like You know cutting the water with with the scissors or blowing over the knives and This idea of fragility of ephemerity of Vulnerability I found it very beautiful in a quotation from the Talmud that I lately Discovered and I would like to read it to you. So It says it is said in the Talmud that God have created ten strong things And it says the rock is strong, but iron can break it The iron is strong, but fire can melt it The fire is strong, but water can extinguish it The water is strong But clouds can hold it the clouds are strong But wind can disperse them The wind is strong But men can face it The man is strong, but fear can break it The fear is strong, but the wine can drown it The wine is strong, but sleep can erase it The sleep is strong, but the death is stronger than all I was told that I was told that but I didn't look after that other questions I have to ask you that this this question because I think it goes to How how things get made which is a concern of a lot of students and that is how you finance these very Very expensive works. I was thinking about that with the can you speak in the mic? Yeah, can you hear me now? all right Looking at some of these pieces it occurs to me that they're very expensive to Manufacturers through cutting of the marble for example even even the cost of the marble must be considerable and then the the concrete Gift ribbons, I would imagine those are very expensive works. I'm just wondering how you finance them Via my galleries and via the institution that invites me and wants to commission these works There is a budget that is spent on the production of this How important is it for you to engage the audience in your pieces or to create? Engagement that goes further than just looking at it. Oh, sorry about that. I'm a student at the University and I'm wondering How much emphasis do you put on the engagement of the audience that goes further than Looking at the work and walking around it. This is something you're you're interested in or in some of the works I am interested, but it depends on On the type of the work, you know the for instance, you will have a film In the exhibition here, which is called departure and it's a film in which you would see a wolf on the deer Facing in the white space For me that experience Relating to your question of the audience It was very strong in New York because the film has no sound and when people would walk into the gallery they would have the tendency to To be silent in order to hear the sound, but there is no sound So it was very very tense situation for the opening also where we are used that people are talking And you know exchanging that they Suddenly kept silence and just look at the movie There is another work here that it will engage you in the exhibition, but I let you to discover their questions So why I left the art school yes No, we can show it It's in fact We were asked the art school to it's very for me. It's a very I don't know strange to give a speech in a context of a art school because I quit the art school and So the best example is not really mine because you are here to stay and to learn from your teachers, but For a long time I refused to give talks in the art school because I never believed in art school and Also because I have a conflict with my teachers and that ended up very badly in the sense that I was we were asked in the second year to make dialogue with the work in the art history and the I Choose curbed origin of the world. So at that time I took a picture of my girlfriend and And the same position was a black because I wasn't in the photo department. So We had to express ourselves in photography So I made that picture which was look really like a curbed Curb base painting that is now on view at or say miss it or say and And they say wow, what is this? It's pornography. You should have Warn us so we are talking 1998 in Romania So at that period I decided okay, I should go away because it's not a place to have a dialogue. It's not place to Of course today's it would have been it it would be different, but for me What was important it was that You don't have the ground to grow to exchange even though you have all the You know the the tools to do that. So I decided to go to France and Studied there, but even there I had a lot of problems because I Must say that from the second year they took me directly into the post graduate so that was a bit of Strange context. I mean I didn't finish the art school, but they already took me in the post graduates, which was very Courageous and bold from the jury, you know So This won't work. Hmm. This won't works. You can hear me. Yes You can hear me Now I was just thinking when you said that this high this art school experience. I don't know how old you were when you went to art school in Romania, but something that stayed with you from that work, I suppose is there is a kind of There's a there is a kind of anti-authority Strand obviously in all your work the difference it seems Between that work the way it came across to an audience is to relate to the question about audience Seems to me It's very easy to write that one off as a young male artist doing a Shocking experiment on his teacher and his students whereas I think what's interesting with your the work you showed today is It's not that you've disguised it, but it's harder to reject it when it's couched When you turn authority whether it's weapons or whether it's religion or whether it's whatever into a child's game Like there seems to be something like there's a very kind of poetic anarchist like a kind of childish anarchism that's That's a bit deeper or something like it's harder to reject just wondering if I Don't know if what well I'm just wondering if if if you see It just seems Maybe it's because you you ended with the image of this this child blowing weapons down. We're talking about your son cutting the It's it's very hard to Yeah, to write off a gesture that's That's more natural or something mm-hmm and contrived. I guess the that first act seemed like I Don't know there. I mean it's a in all the work that I saw it seems like a kind of sometimes expensive fine, but generally a kind of dissolving of Very of Strut of power like power structures of some sort whether it has to do with gift exchange Systems or I don't know whatever. I can't remember all the details, but So I'm just wondering if if you learn something from that experience as a student Maybe the art school was good for you well as a student, I don't know if I learned because I Must confess that my art school was the meeting with the artist in my town in my Country and I used to travel a lot really a lot and knocking at the door with the works under my shoulder And I said can you give me an advice? Can we have a dialogue? So this is how I worked since the beginning So that was my art school Meeting with real people which are really interesting and Interested to have an exchange because in the problem with the school in General was that you have a certain authority Which imposes that you should learn from it, you know and of course I want to learn but the learning It's not one direction. It's it's double head matches, you know, so That was the That work maybe it came randomly. I mean sooner or later would explode anyway But the idea what I mean what interested me is was how to sublimate All this conflict into something else So I'm not interested in the violence for the sake of the violence. I mean It's something I'm interested in poetry, okay, so that's in the power of the image in the power of the artist creating through Through certain associations of images because we are living in a world in which as artists you compete with everything not that you want to compete you compete with on The street with everything, you know with the shops with so what you do in your art What you bring? Not new but what you bring different in what you do. That's what interests me How you sublimate all this reality and not just Reproduce them in the art gallery or in the museum, you know, so that's that's that's my really I would say battlefield Any other last questions? Okay. Thank you again