Man, time and space by Ion Mandrescu
Bronze statue
73 x 64 x 70 cm
Donated by Romania in 2004
With: Ileana Cornea, art critic
Sound archive: Ion Mandrescu
Authors: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger, Anne Kropotkine
To find out more:
Dana Ceusescu and Sorin Manda, Ion Mandrescu - Sculptura, Editura Gutenberg, 2004 (in Romanian)
Transcription
Opening titles: L'Atelier de l'Europe, discovering the Council of Europe’s art collection.
Man, time and space by Ion Mandrescu. Bronze statue donated by Romania in 2004, with Ileana Cornea and, from the sound archives, the voice of Ion Mandrescu.
Ileana Cornea: Omul, Timpul, Spațiul: “Man, time and space”. We see a wheel fashioned from bronze, rugged looking and slight greenish in colour. Inside the wheel is the figure of a naked man. An old man, in fact. One who has experienced life. The man is lying stretched out; his body is impaled, but he's trying to extricate himself from the spiral, this spinning wheel, because his left foot is pointing forward, with almost dancer-like grace. Notice, too, his hands, which are very beautiful: long and feminine. One is strongly reminded here of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man. This man stretching out his hand, who is inside both a circle and a square. The artwork is part of a cycle that began in the 1980s.
Ion Mandrescu: Începutul începutului a fost cam prin 85 85. Până la acel personaj am avut o serie de lucrări, bineînțeles…
[English]: It all began around 1985. Before finally arriving at this figure, I had already produced a series of works…
Ion Mandrescu: …abstracte coloana coloană orizontală, care la un moment dat se identifica cu un personaj.
[English]: …with an abstract horizontal column which, at some point, became a human figure.
Ion Mandrescu: …o serie de arce.
[English]: …and a series of arches.
Ileana Cornea: It's as if he had found something, a treasure, and he's producing iterations of this artwork and looking at it – or rather examining the question - from every angle.
Ion Mandrescu: Jumătate de an această roată…
[English]: Six months later, there was this wheel…
Ion Mandrescu: …la un moment dat, tot din acea perioadă vorbesc de semnele abstracte era pânza de păianjen
[English]: … at one point, there was talk of abstract signs. A spider’s web.
Ion Mandrescu: …e această piesă care are corespondent în mandală.
[English]: …a shape reminiscent of a mandala.
Ileana Cornea: The wheel is all about movement. That's what's so important to him. It's also the world, the universe. You can look for symbols. After that, it's up to each person to imagine their own wheel. My grandparents lived in the Romanian countryside. For me, the wheel is a cartwheel, on a cart pulled by horses, the kind of wheel you find on a farm. It's the wheel that civilised us. It's also something that takes us back to a kind of ancient world, to Antiquity.
Ion Mandrescu: I am zis eu printr un personaj spiritualizat.
[English]: I conjured him up through a spiritualised figure.
Ion Mandrescu: Și cine poate fi aceasta?
[English]: And who might he be?
Ion Mandrescu: Deci, un personaj poate să se identifice cu Budha, cu Christ, cu Christos,…
[English]: He could be Buddha, Christ, etc.
Ion Mandrescu: …cu deci un personaj cu încărcătură puternică în roata de simbol al universului ăsta din centrul universului.
[English]: …a figure freighted with symbolic meaning in the wheel, at the centre of the universe.
Ion Mandrescu: Dacă el transmite, transmite fiecăruia de el posibilități de interpretare. Unii spun că el luptă cu destinul, alții nu.
[English]: The piece invites viewers to form their own interpretation. Some say he is fighting against destiny. Others disagree.
Ileana Cornea: Buddha, Christ... All these figures represent us. So it's humankind itself, it's us. It's the human being who is inside there, caught between their own finite nature and their desire to escape their finitude by any means. In any case, suffering and balance is what the human condition is all about. It’s a bit like Europe going through wars and coming out of them, because that is Ion Mandrescu’s message to us. We will get out of this spiral. We need to attain a kind of spirituality in order to be able to become ourselves again.
Closing credits: That was Man, time and space by Ion Mandrescu, a Council of Europe podcast, created by Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger and Anne Kropotkine, with the art critic Ileana Cornea and, from the sound archives, the voice of Ion Mandrescu. Other episodes are available on the Council of Europe website.
