If one thing is clear, it’s that Mircea Cantor likes his art history. As a Romanian artist (currently based in Paris), he left home eight years ago hitchhiking across europe with a blank sign (implying that he had no destination and was willing to travel anywhere). Adding to the Beuys-ian echos is a piece from 2005, “Deeparture,” a film documenting the uneasy circling of a wolf and a deer trapped together in a gallery space. Going even further back through art history is the cheeky photograph of discarded urinals titled “I shot this image because it is highly suggestive within a specific circle.
Perhaps his most interesting art historical repurposing happens in “The landscape is changing,” in which Smithson’s mirror displacement becomes a vehicle for protest. The documentation of this event (2003) reveals demonstrators marching through the capital of Albania with mirrors in the place of traditional slogans on their picket signs.
His show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art just came down, and back in December, 1995 Frieze did a small write up on some recent work.
He’s also the co-editor of Version Magazine.
