49. Hydra [2024]

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Roxana Scripcaru

Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office

0736 381 153 roxana.scripcaru@artmark.ro

49. Hydra [2024]

Costin Ioniță

1978, București

Estimate:

EUR 1.000 - 2.000

Sold

EUR 9.500

patinated bronze, 35 x 20 x 11 cm, signed, dated and numbered at the base, by scratching, "Costin Ioniță, 2024, 8/10"

"Sculptor Costin Ionita has modeled between the past and present, between communism and capitalism, creating a work that clarifies confusions and naiveties related to these two sections from Romania's recent history. Two ideological backgrounds, which we normally believe to be separate, are illustrated as being in a process of reciprocal genesis. Costin Ionita lucidly creates a still lively body of communism, holding seven rose heads, seemingly severed, but well-connected, of a Hydra - a mythological creature, reference, this time symbolic, to the political present. The individuation of the seven floral heads in the poised body shows the regenerative capacity of a system, an observation carefully and explicitly transposed by artist Costin Ionita in his ambitious work. The Hydra should be a traveling work - brought in front of party headquarters, public institutions with power and administration duties. The reason why the seven blossomed heads should be carried on a solid body, sculpted by Costin Ionita, is simple: this work would be an ethical memento, useful to the Romanian political space. Without being moralizing, the sculpture captures in essence the reality hidden to many and reveals broadly the moral and human trajectory of our politics. The Hydra has a narrative structure that denotes the desire for power of each head rooted in a body caught in action, to punctuate the present and the timeliness of the message conveyed. The modern and imposing monument demonstrates, beyond freedom of expression, a lot of social introspection capacity of the sculptor Costin Ionita. This work manages to illustrate the distance between the powerless and those who bear and bloom power with new and new heads. Costin Ionita's achievement goes beyond the boundaries of art and could be a key reading for studying the history of recent decades in Romania." (Claudia Zidaru, "Hydra -Costin Ionita. Project 12: 02.07.2012-05.11.212", in Project 1990. Public Art Program 2010-2014, by Ioana Ciocan, Ed. Vellant, Bucharest, 2014, pp. 70-74) This time we are dealing with a reduction of the original work, which, however, preserves the elements and semantic charge of the former.

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