25 Apr 2008

Dan Perjovschi at Kunsthaus Baselland

With his unpretentious, comic-like, political, humoristic, and ironic drawings on walls and windows, Dan Perjovschi (born in 1961 in Sibiu/Romania, lives in Bucharest) has definitely made a name for himself in the past few years. Perjovschi, who takes a keen interest in world affairs, is known in Romania also for his politically inspired performances as well as for his journalistic work for Magazine 22, a publication that came into being following the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1987.

With his artistically unique and direct language that is reminiscent of children’s drawings and Art Brut, he comments on international and local events, or on that world in which his works manifest themselves—the art scene. Equipped with a permanent marker or chalk, without having done any preliminary drawings, just with a rough idea about the content of his commentary, the artist arrives at the scene of his creative act. Dan Perjovschi takes an approach that is very specific to the venue and space in question.

For the exhibition “Fair enough” staged at Kunsthaus Baselland, he has devoted his attention to the rows of windows that are a salient feature of the building. Working with daily newspapers, magazines, and an Internet connection to news agencies, the artist produced new drawings on location, and reuse his existing repertoire of drawings with a view to further developing, reinterpreting, or logically complementing adjacent drawings.

Perjovschi’s drawings express vitriolic comments and provide lucid and mordant analyses. They put controversial things in a nutshell, they are polemic and critical at the same time. Most strikingly, they are straightforward, in-your-face, and direct, and they brook no indifference.