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| Mircea Cantor |
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For L.F.D.A. 02.Mircea Cantor’s work for La Force de l’Art 02 was inspired by a visit to the region of Maramures, close to the Carpathian mountains in his native Romania. Local houses feature entrances marked by huge wooden gateways carved with stylised representations of the Tree of Life, designed – according to pagan tradition – to protect the home from death-dealing spirits. With the help of a local craftsman, Mircea Cantor has recreated one of these gateways, replacing the Tree of Life with a motif from modern science, the spiralling DNA molecule. The wood was then covered in gold leaf. Rich in symbolism, the new gateway has been created on the same scale as the originals, bridging two cultures : the rural life of Cantor’s home region of Romania, and the modern, urban world of the nave of the Grand Palais, at the heart of Paris. The gateway also connects two periods in history, standing as an amalgam of the archaic, superstitious, popular beliefs of Romania’s farmers, and our modern faith in scientific progress, and the mastery of the workings of our own genetic code. Cantor’s work situates his artistic approach at the crossing-point between two distinct worlds : traditional craft skills on the one hand, and state-of-the-art technology on the other. The gateway embodies a meeting of opposites, taking a critical look at our concept of the future and the nature of progress, and examining the ways we choose to protect ourselves, both now and in times past. [M.A.] Mircea CantorHaving grown up in Romania under the former Communist dictatorship, Mircea Cantor has developed a body of work devoted to warning against all forms of ideology. Emphasizing the impossible existence of a univocal world, the artist plays with unexpected symbolic associations to propose new ways of understanding the real. Without bearing witness to membership in any political party whatsoever, the works of Mircea Cantor can be read as manifestoes inviting the spectator to take action as a citizen in the great undertaking that is the making of our society. [M. A.] Mircea Cantor was born in 1977 in Oradea (Romania).
 Mircea Cantor |
