Mircea Cantor, 'Which light kills you', 2009. Courtesy the artist and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv.
Mircea Cantor is the epitome of a 21st century artist, constantly crossing borders but always returning to his roots. Having grown up in Eastern Europe during the Communist era, Cantor frequently draws on his own memory to explore the realities of power and the disintegration of cultural boundaries. Cantor often positions himself at the crossroads between worlds, acting as an observer of societies and cultures and encouraging comparisons between differing attitudes and beliefs.
Mircea Cantor, ‘Diamond Corn’ (2005) (detail). Courtesy the artist and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv.Photo: Ruth Clark.
Cantor creates works that act as tools with which we can deconstruct the meaning of our everyday lives. Through subtle gestures and arrangements, he enhances our habitual perceptions and expectations, highlighting the peculiarities without lecturing in morality or artificial solutions. Cantor stages a reality that is in constant flux, deliberately resistant to unambiguous categorisation and decisively determined by uncertainty. His work takes up social issues while combining political content with a distinctly poetic formal vocabulary.
Exhibition Details
‘Which light kills you’ was curated by Ami Barak.
Exhibition Talk
On 23rd January, Dr. Dominic Paterson, writer and art historian based at the University of Glasgow, offered his thoughts on the work of Mircea Cantor and his exhibition ‘Which light kills you’.
