caldarâm – picioare – în plin

December 13th – January 24th 2025
Curated by Liviana Dan

‘caldarâm – picioare – în plin’ is the firing order with live ammunition used in December 1989 in Timișoara. The streets bridges and parks were full of people. Radu Grindei was always on the streets. He photographed and wrote so that no moment would be forgotten. He photographed people streets houses trees flags the sky fear silence the sound of gunshots and he wrote about everything.

Sometimes his hand trembled with fear. His photography, severely underexposed, is simple and vulnerable.

Everything happens before him.

The image is suspended between existing and being an illusion.

The sensitive image with its context generated a harsh, severe minimalism.

Confused with this observation effect there is also the story written by Radu Grindei for each real moment. And each real moment easily became a commented moment.

The journey is a kind of correction / healing / recovery.

A beginning, when did the past end?

Radu Grindei thinks honestly about time.

Human time / political time / allegorical time.

A poetic play of waiting that never ends.

The waiting from the white wall of the opera in Timișoara with people on the roof – and the waiting in front of a black and white TV set, placed openly in a window facing the street…

Actions that curiously are both heroic and modest.

Time accelerates history, organizes events, creates coincidences.

Strangely everything seems to be said by time.

A stratified time that makes fear a form of attention and a zone of safety.

Scared, Radu Grindei intuitively refuses categories.

With all the political imbalance and all the confusion, nothing is wrong or mistaken in his photography.

The narrative format is not a display but a statement. A radical statement about imagination, hope, empathy.

Each image begins simply. The aesthetics timidly use memories.

The aesthetics preserve the mystery, leaving some memories undescribed, unspecified, unknown.

Life, revolt, change anticipate a new radicality.

It is a real world that is rebelling. The process of measuring is neither perfect nor ideal.

Uncertainty is confused with the observation effect.

The nearby changes, which are felt, cannot save, cannot justify anything.

Authority and power are lost.

The support structure is still empty.

A vast commitment to freedom is projected over the city over parks over people over the sky.