Opening:
2025 Feb 07, 19:00
On view:
2025 Feb 08 2025 Mar 28
Program:
11 a.m. – 7 p.m., except Mondays and holidays

The aim of the 2024 international residency program of the B5 Studio in Târgu Mureș was to explore the complex relationship between the artist and the curator.
After the curatorial turn, artistic content is created and mediatised on a number of levels. The curator takes a more creative and active role – working not from outside the artistic process, but from an internal perspective. And the artist, who has long been a curator of him/herself and of other artists, of other contents and platforms, is always finding new roles for him/herself. Contemporary art transcends the context of the exhibition, but it does not abandon its original forms of realisation, and collaboration is a recurring motif at many junctures.
While collaboration in this project materialized in different ways and through various types of interactions, thematically, the project gained a strong local focus—an aspect inherently embedded in the residency program format.

The group exhibition at MAGMA presents video installations and sound works, alternative publications and conceptual maps, drawings, texts, and video pieces created during the residency periods.
All four projects on display are connected to the context of Târgu Mureș, though they approach it from different perspectives: some focus on the dynamics of bilingualism and translation (Hu-Ro), incorporating the Roma perspective into this complexity and tracing the linguistic filter of reality; others investigate local relationships with water in the collective, mental, and physical space or seek to capture subtle connections and layers of complexity within the everyday, seemingly simple or ordinary narratives.

Cătălina Nistor (RO, 1981) “I have been born in Craiova, and I have been working as an artist in Cluj since 2015.
Through a self-ironic approach, my artistic practice brings taboo subjects and clichés of thought to the surface.
I work with different mediums of expression, from painting or drawing to objects and publications in limited editions, experimenting with various reproduction techniques over the years. In the last four years, I have initiated two collaborative publications, one of which is an ongoing project.”
MAGMA (Kispál Ágnes-Evelin, 1980 & Kispál Attila, 1977): The MAGMA Contemporary Art Exhibition Space in Sfântu Gheorghe began its operations on 1 April 2010 as a result of a civic initiative. The founders and operators of the exhibition space – Kispál Attila, Kispál Ágnes-Evelin, and until 2013, Vetró Bodoni Barnabás – were also organisers of several artist-run projects at various locations and in collaboration with different organisations even before the official opening. Since 2008, they have been consistently working to organise contemporary art events in the region, with a greater emphasis on conceptual and media art. An important guideline for them is that the exhibition space exists for the artists.

Norbert Kuki (SK) is a multi-genre intermedia artist who explores and defines contemporary Roma aesthetics and culture in his work. The most important part of his work is his homeland, Žitný ostrov, and therefore, in his project “Children of Untouchability,” he focused on collecting oral histories from local people to uncover narratives that have not yet been heard. He later connected the collected stories to create a coherent narrative, which culminated in a radio play. He mainly focused on the 1990s and 2000s to show firsthand what it meant to be a young Roma during that time and how the community dealt with issues such as racism, addiction, money, loyalty, self-destruction, and self-realization. His work addresses the globalization of the Roma language through music.
Judit Angel (1963) is an art historian, curator born in Arad, Romania. During her career, she worked at the Arad Art Museum, at the Budapest Kunsthalle, and since 2013 she has been leading the Bratislava contemporary art institution tranzit.sk – sk.tranzit.org/ . Her main fields of interest are institutional criticism and the examination of the relationship between art and society from a post-Anthropocene perspective. tranzitsk is a flexible institution that responds to local needs, mediates different forms of knowledge, and builds international relations. tranzitsk is a member of the international art network tranzit.org.

Isabel Val Sánchez (ES, 1988) is an artist exploring nostalgia, grief and the invisible connections between past and present. Her practice is based on research, ritual andrepetition, followed by a great interest in analogue techniques that allow space for improvisation and mistakes. Currently she lives in Barcelona.
Kata Ungvári-Zrínyi (1987) works primarily as a curator and art critic, but is also a practicing artist. Her vision is a curatorial practice that is able to bring different types of visual manifestations into a natural harmony, connecting through the themes it raises and engaging with the lay audience as well; she often explores certain aspects of materiality and the everyday. Her most important curatorial work is “Winter Games”, a five-year series of events centered on the topic of winter festivities. She has presented contemporary Transylvanian Hungarian artists over a three-year cycle in OPUS magazine of Dunajská Streda.

Orsolya Láng (RO/HU, 1985) grew up in Târgu Mureș. She is well-versed in both writing and visual art, and is currently a doctoral student at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, researching pre-regime-change Eastern European animations. As an artist, she is interested in the distillation of life, the overlapping meanings and effects, and the authentic presence of different qualities and moods in a single moment. The imprints of these multifaceted life scenes can be seen in her visual works and read in her writings.
József Bartha (1960) is a visual artist, curator, set designer and associate professor at the University of Arts in Târgu Mureș. Initiator and organiser of several national and international contemporary art projects. Founder and director of the ARTeast Foundation in Târgu Mureș and B5 Studio. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cluj (1987). He obtained his DLA degree from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest in 2012. In 1996, he received an ArtsLink scholarship in the United States, and in 2005, he was awarded a scholarship from the Swiss Boswill Art Committee. He has had solo exhibitions in Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the United States. He has participated in numerous national and international group exhibitions.