​​Daniel Gontz – Remake

Gontz decided to initiate the dialogue or polemic by using the emblematic image of post-revolutionary Romanian art, one of subREAL’s “Framing Bucharest” photographs. Like all works in “Framing the Cities”, this subREAL picture isolates and frames a fragment of architecture, in temporal discontinuity and ideological opposition to the rest of the setting.

The subREAL performance was reenacted, with Daniel Gontz and Vlad Nancă playing the part of the masters and using the same frame. The camera was operated by Iosif Kiraly of subREAL and the photograph was reproduced as faithfully as possible, something facilitated by the fact that the urban landscape of the location is the same as it was, in spite of passing years. Nothing has changed architecturally and urbanistically, therefore Gontz’s piece is not to be understood as a demonstration of all-conquering liberal prosperity.

The remakes signal the emergence of a new generation that closes, in a sense, an era: it renders the model classical by the fact that it has triggered a reproduction. It forces the previous generation into a “master” status, untouchable but also distant. Gontz’s maneuver simulates the canon – first reproduced, then pushed away through acts of differentiation.