The Paintbrush Factory is a cultural institution that appeared on the privatized infrastructure of a socialist industrial project. This contemporary institutional construction has coquetted with principles of cooperation or collective work in a system that encourages competition and unconstrained market domination. This has ensured it recognition as an entrepreneurial-artistic model.
The critical moment of 2016 has shown the exhaustion of affective resources of those involved, but also left room for new possible configurations.
The second edition of the yearly exhibition Residents Only pragmatically illustrates the fact that individual value is created commonly. With this occasion, the curatorial contribution puts again into action the knowledge produced collectively in recent years in the contemporary art space tranzit.ro in Iași, where the curator is working.
The 11 participating artists were invited to engage in a mutual relationship, each of them providing one personal work to a colleague included in the exhibition and receiving another. The redistributing scheme was imposed by the curator in a non-transparent, nevertheless non-arbitrary way. No artist was informed beforehand of which private collection would hold his work. Although this exhibition acts at the representational level, the transfer is real and definitive. The works that artists have decided to offer and exhibit can then be freely capitalized by their new owner.
This exhibition would not have been possible without the trust that all participants generously offered.
A cultural program cofinanced by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The program does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the program or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
Project supported by Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council.