BINOM + 1

PITESTI PHENOMENON 79/89/19 // B I N O M + 1
// alternative strategies for the ideological recovery of the concentration / political heritage //
// anamnetic exercises: 70 years Pitești Phenomenon // 30 years Revolution 1989 //

It is an artist-run project that envisages a re-interrogation of a space considered “alternative” for an artistic project. At the same time, it aims to recover a historical identity, astonishingly unfamiliar to the collective mind: the former penitentiary in Pitești, functional between 1941-1977.
The Pitești Prison Memorial is currently an objective of public interest, with private administration, which aims to recover the memory of the place and history, of great importance for understanding the communist phenomenon in Romania. Today, much of the former prison retains the image specific to that period and can be visited with a guide, having a prior appointment.

B I N O M + 1

The sculpture and fresco exhibition (Andrei Bălan and Andrei Mușat) “BINOM” began its journey in a space of the Parliament Palace in February 2019. The exhibition has a strong iconic, recuperative, vertical character, containing in its DNA a palpable dose of momentum to the high, universally perceptible.

B I N O M + 1 complements the traditional duo with an audio-video component in the vision of visual artist-architect Dan Adrian Ionescu (d.a.i).
The artistic intervention proposes to occupy the 31 former cells of the penitentiary-memorial, for six months (May-October 2020) with unconventional pieces of sculpture, fresco works, sound installations and 3D video mapping, discursive and visual segments that reconstruct the identity of the space, citing his biography or distancing himself from it.

Pitesti Prison, today a Memorial, was one of the many extermination sites used by the communist regime in its violent and total occupation of Romania. However, the unimaginable physical and psychological tortures used here single out this prison as a space of absolute evil that made death appear to be the easiest escape.

2019-2020