Ana Lupaş
Ana Lupaş figures among those artists who, through a sophisticated process of creation, have continually expanded the conventional understandings of Conceptual Art. Author of objects, textiles, environments, happenings, installations, performances, Lupaş has developed, starting from the mid-sixties, a complex nest of art interventions, which have systematically aimed at dismantling the traditional structure of the artwork. Further, it is important to accentuate the seminal influence that Lupaş’ exceptional artistic personality had on a generation of Romanian artists in the 1970s. Located between
the spaces of art and life, the work of Lupaş is the result of a long process of elaboration and conceptualization, which starts from a self-questioning of how art must be communicated and displayed. The directions and strategies of her artistic practice highlight the fact that the gesture of art/ist must be experienced by the spectator and be made immediately available to him or her. Aspiring at a re-connection with the natural, at a rehabilitation of a universal harmony, her performative installations and objects acquire utopian feature and monumental presence. Situating in her practice close to the work of an ethnologist, Lupaş usually makes appeal to visual references and practices belonging to a traditional culture. Already in 1964, Lupaş created the work “Solemn Process“, minimalist objects manufactured of straw in various dimensions: steles, wreaths and circles which were installed and arranged outdoors and inside the village’s houses. Involving the people in the production of these objects, “Solemn Process“ embodies a traditional ritual whose solemnity generates not only the production of formal structures beautiful in their representation which melt within the natural surroundings, but also a new reconsideration of the conditions of creation of the art object. The process of “conservation” and “restauration” emphasizes questions of permanence of the artwork, referring either to its physical condition or to its discursive, interpretative condition. In her attempt to conserve early works, Lupaş accentuates the fact that the rapport of art with itself is essentially historical and that the process of translation and restoring the historical pieces can be read as an attempt to fix and/or to rethink this process. A.Se.
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