Muresan Ciprian

Pioneers
2006-2008
42 drawings, A4 each. Etching with burnished aquatint

In the series of drawings, “Pioneers”, by Ciprian Muresan, pencil on paper depicts a repetitively recurrent situation – a pioneer blowing into a paper bag. At a glance, it is clear that the author has gone through the academic drill offered until now in art schools in post-communist countries. This technique helps Ciprian to create tension between classical form and subjects he predominantly takes from contemporary life. The focal theme of the majority of his work is the permanent need to deal with his history, both personally and collectively. Every pioneer is portrayed from a different perspective, with the paper bag fully inflated. To me, this scene is immediately associated with the resulting event – the event of destroying the bag and creating a noise which in the “eyes” of a child is a small explosion. This sound is always surprising, even when it is expected. From my own experience I have to say that I can never stop myself from jumping even a little. A young pioneer is thus defined by the uniform, which embraces his body and denotes him as an organised revolutionary watching over what is going on around him. Implementing the act of destroying an inflated paper bag limits his individuality as a child due to who he is, and who he possibly does not want to become as an adult. In my personal recollections, when I was a member of a pioneer organisation for six years, a Pioneer was characterised by a “sophisticated” model of cooperation with the regime. I never received any criticism or ironic comments against this organisation from my parents or those around me. And so I trusted in the slowly fading idea
of a Pioneer (or to phrase it better, I did not think about it and did not resist it) until I was thirteen, when the communist regime ended. I did not suspect a thing about the interest of the communist system in taking control over the raising of children from the parents, who could not be completely trusted. After all, it was forty years since the Communists had come to power and I was from the second generation growing up in this regime (…) Essentially, these drawings are an allegory which can be transferred to any kind of society, to the conflict between a child’s developing ego and the attempt of a society to control the body of an individual. (Jiří Skála, excerpt from We were and will be pioneers)

Ciprian Muresan (1977, Cluj, Romania) is one of the founders – together with Mircea Cantor and Gabriela Vanga – of Version magazine and, since 2005, one of the editors of Idea. Arts + Society magazine. He has exhibited widely, participating in different events such as Periferic Biennial (2006), the Prague Biennial (2007), the Athens Biennial (2007), Art Statements in Basel etc. Ciprian Muresan lives and works in Cluj, Romania.