Original artwork description:

"Pictorial documents of buildings shot during the Romanian revolution of 1989, Augustin Răzvan
Radu's series CS 1.9.89 poses questions of collective memory and the affective heritage pertaining to
architectural remnants of conflict. Transitioning from the depiction of buildings greatly afflicted by
bullet damage to those bearing little to no scars, CS 1.9.89 functions beyond the mere visual
accumulation of the recently artifactual. The turn towards painting in favor of photography and its
ontological indexicality is intentional, for within Augustin Răzvan Radu's series more is at stake than
merely circumscribing the historical. While the objective, the factual, and the cumulative work towards
conserving the topography of Bucharest's constructed landscape, such forces remain subordinate to the
canvas surface that lends itself to the reenacting of both personal and aggregated experiences of the
1989 revolution. The shot buildings are magnified, extracted from the above, and introduced within a
conventional visual field by which they are subsumed. The viewer is confronted, transposed in situ to
inhabit the a posteriori of insurrection. Bullet marks corrupt the otherwise eerie tranquility and
perceived perenniality of Communist edifices. Thus, memory is activated through trace, through the
presence of absence (Derrida), for each building becomes a testament of the overthrown regime and its
disfigured facade, a sign of upheaval."

Text by Smaranda Ciubotaru

Materials used:

oil

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