DE CE AI VENIT ACASĂ ?

ADRIAN IONIȚĂ
Strada Joseph Preyer 26 B
Timişoara, 300150, Timiş, România
Email: larrybonnphoenix@gmail.com
Tel: +40-771-526-844
 Adrian Ionita, photo credits, 2018, Ann Bocchetti (Argentina)

COMENTARIU CRITIC

Încercări de a reda, în fapt, de a înregistra imagini halucinogene (de obicei, imagini

hipnagogice sau hipnopompice) de dragul artei, sunt rare. Cu toate acestea, un proiect foarte
interesant este în curs. Larry Bonn Phoenix (Adrian Ioniță), un artist din Chicago, încearcă să
capteze imagini hipnagogice folosind tehnici inovatoare. Tehnica sa de autoobservare poate servi ca
evidență a tehnicilor de investigare recomandate de Wundt înaintea și în timpul primilor anilor de
criză prin care a trecut studiul Imageriei Mentale.

[Anthony Birch,  Ph.D., autor al „The Nature of Visual Mental Images” , City University of New
York, 1999]

Putem distinge și aplicarea în practica artistică a unor metode generale de invenție și

descoperire, una dintre cele mai frecvente fiind așa numita "metodă a lui Moliere" sau apelul la
profani (profanul ca astronom, zoolog etc. – Adrian Ioniță, mirat în fața bolții cerești sau a
“funcționării mușuroiului cârtiței, introduce puncte de vedere neașteptate, de interes plastic). În alte
desene, constatăm că Adrian Ioniță practică metoda ocolului, studierea unor fenomene în scopul
înțelegerii altor fenomene, metoda cazurilor limită sau a caricaturii, a marcajului prin repere sau
studiul fenomenelor situate între două domenii bine cunoscute, adică “metoda “țara nimănui”.

[Mihai Drişcu*, redactor-sef, Revista Arta, Nr. 4/1983, Bucureşti, România]

Adrian Ioniță declanșează în mintea privitorului, un film mental despre agent și victimă,
mister și tensiune. Sentimentul de dezechilibru, izolare, înstrăinare, ispită hipnotică, restricție sau
pedeapsă pe care îl inspiră “Silence”, lucrarea centrala a expozitiei “I'm 66, a show for no special
reason”, transformă acest film mental într-un comentariu filosofic despre absență, nimic și
anxietatea pe care o simțim în fața unui eveniment imprevizibil.

[“Adrian Ioniță și Considerația 66 asupra Nimicului”, Nicoleta Papp, Banatul Azi, România, 2018]
BIOGRAFIE

n. 1952, Timişoara, în 1985 se stabilește la Chicago, cetatenie americana 1991, se repatriază în 2010.

Studii academice:

1976 - Institutul de Arte Plastice „Nicolae Grigorescu”, clasa profesor Geta Caragiu și Ion Irimescu,
București. Membru UAP din anul 2002.

EXPOZIȚII:

Expoziții personale:

2013 - The Cat Box, Muzeul Municipiului Bucureşti, (Palatul Șutzu) România;

2018 - I'm 66, a show for no particular reason, Lapsus Art Space, Timişoara, România;

Expoziții de grup, (selectiv):

1980 - Salonul Anual Judeţean Timiş, Galeria Bastion, Timişoara, România;

1983 - Idea, Galeria Bastion, Timişoara, România;

1985 - Ex-Tempore, Obalne Gallery, Piran, Slovenia;

1996 - Shchabli Art Exhibition, Ukrainian Cultural Center, Chicago, USA;

2002 - Around the Coyote Art Festival, Chicago, USA;

2011 - Casa Poparad,  Timişoara, România;

2012 - Gărâna Arthouse Wolfsberg International Exposition, Galeria Triade, România;

2013 - EST ÉTHIQUE, La Gare Cultural Center, Méricourt (Pas-de-Calais), France;

2014 - Peisaj Timişorean, Fundaţia Rubin, Timişoara, România;

2015 - “We mark our territory” Galeria Pygmalion, Timişoara, România;

2018 - Gernik international Art Camp Expo, Galeria Primariei Timişoara, România;

2019 - Al Fuheis Art Center, Jordan,

2020 - Famagusta International Art Show, Moscheea Buğday, Cyprus

Simpozioane de arta:

1976 - Simpozionul Naţional de Sculptură Măgura Buzăului, România;

1983 - Simpozionul Naţional de Sculptură Deta, România;

1984 - Simpozionul Naţional de Sculptură Timişoara, România;

1985 - Forma Viva International Symposium for Sculpture, Slovenia;

2012 - Gărâna Arthouse Wolfsberg International, România;

2018 - Gernik International Art Camp, România;

2019 - Al Fuheis be Rishati International Symposium, Jordan;

2020 - Famagusta International Art Festival, Cyprus

BIBLIOGRAFIE (selectiv)

Andrei Banta, "Măgura 1976" Revista Amfiteatru, Bucharest, September 1976

Mihai Drişcu, Adrian Ioniţă, Revista Arta, Nr. 4/1983, Bucureşti, România, 1983.

Majda Susa, Dvakrat zlomljen simbol, Primordske Novice, Slovenia, 1985.

Chris Johnson, Interview w/Artist Larry Bonn Phoenix, City Link, Chicago, USA, 2001.

Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Imageria mentală a lui Adrian Ioniţă, Cronica Română, 2002.

Robert Şerban, Piper pe limbă, TVR Timişoara, România, 2011.

Vlasiu, Ioana (coord.), Dicționarul sculptorilor  din România. Secolele XIX-XX. vol. II, lit. H-Z,

Editura Academiei Române, București, 2012, pp. 52 - 53.

Andrei Medinschi (coord.), Tradiţie şi Postmodernitate- 200 de ani de artă plastică în Banat, Areal

Banat, 2012, pp. 165-170.

Radu Pervolovici (coord.), Un secol de sculptură românească - enciclopedie on-line, 2013. 

Cosmin Nasui, „The cat in the box” @ Palatul Suțu, București Modernism, 9 octombrie, 2013

Bruce Sterling, „Romanian Steampunk”, Wired, USA, 14 martie, 2009

Paula Romanescu „Bastonul lui Ionita” Viata Medicală, 14 Noiembrie, 2013

Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Claustrarea unei pisici şi înjumătăţirea unui 0, Ziarul Financiar, 2013

Coriolan Babeţi, “Jurnal de tabără” Orizont, August 31, 1984

Ion Arieşeanu, “În aer liber” Orizont, August 17, 1984

Coriolan Babeţi, “Parcul de sculptură de la Deta” Revista Arta, Bucureşti, România, 1984

Vasile Draguţ, “Filiala UAP Timişoara” Revista Arta, Bucureşti, România, 1984

Coriolan Babeţi, “Sculptura pentru un peisaj de geneză” Arta, Bucureşti, România, 1985

Lukancic Mori, “Pesek zdruzil otroke in odrasle” Dnevnik, Slovenia, August 19, 1985

Boris Suligoj”, “Sest moz v spopadu z istrskim kamnom”, Delo, Slovenia, 1985

Milan Dekleva, “Urocevalci prostora na Seci” Dnevnik, Zagreb, Slovenia,  1985

Antonio Grazotto, “Scultore rumeno e la moglie hanno scelto la liberta” Il Mattino di Padova, Italia,
1985

“Uno scultore rumeno ha chiesto asilo politico”, Il Gazzettino di Padova, Italia, 1985

G.C., “A Paddova scultore romeno fuggito dall’Est” Il Gazzettino, Padova, Italia 1985

Max Potter, “Protecting Leo” The Reader, Chicago, 1994

Kevin Lynch, “Life complex for art prodigy” The Capital Times, Wisconsin, USA 1996

Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, “Imageria mentala a lui Adrian Ioniţă” Cronica Româna, 2002

Adrian Silvan Ionescu, “Eu nu sint colectionar de artă” Observator Cultural, România, 2004

“Despre Mental Imagery”, (conferinţa) Academia de Arta Grigorescu, Bucharest, 2005

Mihaela Dinca, “Interviu la Radio Romania International”, Bucureşti, mai, 2005

“Tradition and Postmodernity, 200 years of fine arts in Banat” (anthology), 2012

“Două simpozioane de sculptură din Banat. O analiză la persoana întâia” de  Adrian Ionita in

“Traditie-si-Postmodernitate, 200 de ani de arta plastica in ”2012,  pg. 140=145 pdf

Radu Pervolovici (coord.), Un secol de sculptură românească, (encyclopedia of art), 2013.

“Doua sculpturi puse pe malul Begai acum 30 de ani, la Timisoara, inlaturate cu buldozerul! ”, by
Dana Constantin, Opinia Timisoarei, 2014

“Perna lui Ioniţă în exil local”, de Cornel Tudor, Agenda CJTimis, 25 februarie,  2016

“Adrian Ioniță și Considerația 66 asupra Nimicului”, Nicoleta Papp, Banatul Azi, 2018

„Abu Rumman, Minister of Culture and Youth celebrates the arts”, mncdailynetwork, Jordan

12 August, 2019,

”4th International Gazimağusa Art Festival”, Mazgal Hendek Ajans, Cyprus, March 2020

„Gazimağusa Sanat Festivali Sergi Açilişi Gerçekleşti” Magusa Haber Ajansi, 2020
 ARTISTIC APROACH

"At 60, I could do the same things I could do at 30, if I could only remember what those things are".

Billy Crystal

Conceptual project ,wood plate, wood letters, resincast Polenta

 UNTWISTING CARAMELS OF THE MIND

 
Done through simple automatic drawings and a precise flat painting technique, Adrian Ionita
represents schematically configured characters which sometimes resembles a homunculus and the
world he constructs for himself. He has no ambition to solve problems, but to offer intriguing and
stimulating insights, shamelessly pointing at naive descriptions as well as towering theoretical
speculations about consciousness. From a modest basis, Adrian Ionita moves between past memories,
future aspirations and present limitations, untwisting ideas of a remarkable phenomenon which needs
imaginative exploration and candour.
The mental life has its Gordian knots, complications and contradictions, times of regress and progress.
Caught in the maze of thought moves and counter-arguments, the arcane of a language which has its
virtues, as well as its vices, the artist tries to tell a story extracted from the delicate alchemy of mental
life and the hypothetical thoughts about the cognitive interchanges with other subjects. To illustrate
and carry out questions about consciousness, into unexplored vistas of thinking, is what he probably
hopes to do.

[Untwisting caramels of the mind, Marius Dumitru about Adrian Ionita, 2014
I am a pilgrim in the art world, an artist who discovered lately his “alterstiehl”. When I’m asked what

I am doing, what is my work about, I tell people that I do nothing, that all my art is about concepts as

absence, places where nothing happens, identity, mental imagery, inner gaze, void, or emptiness.

Some people see brilliance in my reclusiveness; others are preventing me about the possible deadlock

of the “artist without a magna opera”, and place me in the rare league of perpetual draftsmen.

I feel that emptiness and nothingness are not just a blank canvas, room, or locus, or space, or a lack of

something. It’s more than that. It’s of form of spiritual completeness. To get it, you have to be a good

observer who is in touch with himself and does art in a sincere and acute state of ideational necessity.

Philosophers, (Kitaro Nishida, Sartre, and Heidegger) are mining themselves to define the concept,

while Zen practitioners are dreaming to stop the noise of our brain and evade in insignificance. The

artists and musicians, Yves Klein, John Cage, The Suprematists or Dada visionaries, discovered

wonderful forms to represent the power of absence or nothingness. Self has to be understood as a

subject that is not a non-object, and world has to be understood as an object that is not a non-

subject.

As Nishida says, one needs to awaken to “a seeing without a seer.” It is elusive, but I found a

certainty in the mental Odeon of my dreams and hallucinations where from I extract and develop

ideas. Otherwise, as an artist, I try to satisfy an internal necessity of “riddance " from the rhetorical

discourse, indexing ideas through drawing, then challenge, abandon or destroy them. It sets me free.

From time to time something is persisting like a morphological brick and that is my limit, the real

thing.

From 1985 when I defected to United States, till 2009, I worked as a stone carver in the city of

Chicago. It was a heroic decision to exchange a path towards artistic recognition or respectability with

a reclusive and intimate pilgrimage in finding the essence of who I am. I am a compulsive draftsman

who, for more than a quarter century, accumulated hundreds of drawings for sculptural projects. My

studio in the Flat Iron Building in Chicago, from the cool pre gentrification era of Bucktown and
Wicker Park was the house of my first underground ganzfeld experiments in mental imagery and a

bath in a wild and pulsating stream of collective consciousness,

One of my projects, envisioned while cutting stone, deals with conceptual ideas as assemblage,

refitting, fragmentation, detritus and waste. It’s called Débitage and in many ways it’s a blueprint of

my life. To see it, you have to imagine a huge block of granite, rock-faced by the blow of a hammer, a

“testa di serie” for an entire conceptual strategy including flat art, objects, public art, performances or

installations.
 "CLAMPING THE VOID"

My interest in concepts like the presence of an absence or nothingness, goes back as far as 1980 and

was shown at the “Idea” exposition in Timisoara, were smoke was represented as an unveiling agent

of the invisible activity of the air. It had a strong resonance in my life under Communism and still it’s

one of my major themes today, after more than a quarter century in the free world. I see the Void as

the formless source of all forms. It cannot be represented by itself but by the contingencies produced

in the visible world.

"Clamping the Void" was a choice to celebrate Tristan Tzara. As a reference, in a rare photo, Tristan

Tzara is represented near a table on which is resting a C-clamp holding two shoe brushes. I have no

idea about his intention, but for me he was clamping nothingness in the year 1916, a hundred years

ago. Nothingness is about incomprehensibility and ineffable, while clamping nothingness is more

likely a ritual to in-layer the unknown with the best imaginative tools, simplicity and humor. It’s a

celebration of Nada and Dada.

 THE CAT BOX

The Cat Box is a sculpture about uncertainty. A big toy, a steel box revolving on a turning table, a

probe about the uncertainties and truths of others. And mine too. It’s hard to find a black cat in a dark

room. Especially if the cat is not there. We do not know if a cat is in a box, or not, alive, or not, unless

we open it. A reference here is Erwin Schrodinger who came up with a metaphor about a cat in a box,

a great coffee table discussion about quantum physics.

A possible show with my Cat Box is a show about delimited and delimiting, about imaginary stuffing.

A show with steel boxes painted like a Ford Mustang Convertible filled or immersed in an enclosure

of casted fortune cookies for blind people, a show about the binary distinction between absence and

presence, between content and contained and their relative connection.

 SILENCE

In the West people devised a simple non-lethal device to catch mice: a jar sitting on a very unstable

penny. In Romania, people are more generous. They put a jar on a walnut. Its nerve braking to see

glass in such an unstable situation, but this on - the -edge feeling of non-equilibrium, isolation,

estrangement, hypnotic temptation, restriction or punishment is what it’s all about.

Marcel Duchamp is hard to miss as a reference, not only for the fact that he used a porcelain urinal as

art, but mostly for the psychological impact produced by the contemplation of the piece. The same

thing happens by contemplating Silence. It triggers a chain of scenarios and speculations about what

happened or might happen.

 SUBJECT FOR VERA MUHINA, 1985, PORTOROZ, SLOVENIA

A sculpture about the significance of absence, “Subject for Vera Muhina” was completed in 1985 at
the Forma Viva International Symposium for Sculpture at Portoroj Slovenia. Vera Muhina was a
sculptor known for her proletcultist sculpture of the”Peasant and the Worker”, image used as a
trademark by the Russian movie giant Mosfilm. Weighting over 6 tones  and carved in Istrian
Limestone the sculpture depicts a broken hammer and sickle.

While washed by the water of the Adriatic Sea near the promenade of a vertical cliff, the original
project included a hammer planted in the water on a diagonal axis.
 PILLOW , TIMISOARA, ROMANIA, 1984

This is a stone sculpture which deals with the idea of the presence of an absence. The piece resembles

a praying pillow pressed with the imprinted  knees  of an invisible entity in which the accumulated

water of the rain forms tear like mirrors to reflect the sky. Seen from the other side of the river  the

pillow  is sliding visually under the base of the Cathedral from the city of Timisoara. The sculpture

inspired a project/installation designed  with small  napping-anywhere pillows  attached to

architectural structures or unexpected  places - a somnambulation tour for insomniacs from any place

on the planet, still waiting for an inspired curator or promoter.

Collar, aluminium, 2013