Andrei Arion: Rehearsal of Usefulness
21 December 2025, 1-4 p.m.
A temporary intervention at the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life
While we build the infrastructure at the Station, we also reflect on what expressions and moods of art we want to present on the place. We still keep a contact with the artistic scene in Bucharest, an important part of it focused on studio-based practices, and we try to challenge the artists to see what is the potential of their works when taken out from the (comfortable) framework of the city and its gallery spaces. Outside the sphere of Arte Útil, community engaged or socially engaged forms of art, and even with land art only as a far-away reference, in a context where producing objects is still very much the scope of visual artists, how can you make a work of art useful, without instrumentalizing it and without forcing on the artist an exit from their practice in an abrupt way? We proposed to Andrei Arion to imagine a work for the Station, which can function as a lightning protector. Most structures on the place are multi-functional, can we give an art work that possibility too? What the artist responded with is for sure an art work – yet the function of usability is something to be tested, rehearsed.
Andrei Arion (born in 1996) works with sculpture, installations, and drawing. His inspirations range from games to daily observations of surroundings. These influences help create a unique atmosphere and shape his work. He started his artistic practice by converting boxes into wall pieces, distorting familiar objects into unusable ones.
The Last Archive is an artistic project initiated by artist Vlad Basalici and enacted together with curator Raluca Voinea as part of the programme of tranzit.ro/București. In 2012, Vlad Basalici collected newspapers printed on the 21st of December of that year, the last day before what should have been the Apocalypse presumably announced by the Maya civilization, with this event and the news published about it constituting the basis of The Last Archive.
Starting with 2013, a series of artists were invited to propose an exhibition reflecting on the material of this Archive. Péter Szabó, Monotremu, Giles Eldridge, Vilmos Koter, Kiki Mihuță, Maria Baroncea and Anca Bucur are the artists who enlarged the concept of The Last Archive, through the realisation of a project-exhibition, inaugurated each year on the 21st of December, in the space where tranzit.ro/ București activated between 2012-2019. The Last Archive project from 2020, 2012 Alphabet Book, took place in the virtual space and can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/manage/showcases/8902771/info. Since 2021, the project continues in a post-apocalyptic tone, with interventions at the Station, having had as invited artists Adrian Ganea in 2021, Kristin Wenzel in 2022, Nicoleta Moise in 2023 and Mihaela Moldovan in 2024.
If you want to join us for the inauguration of Andrei Arion’s work, we offer some seats in an organized minibus, departing at 12pm from Bucharest. You can register by sending an email to Vlad Basalici: vlad@vladbasalici.com or a private message on our social media accounts.
ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit. ro.
