Schimbul patru

"I am interested in subversive ways of conveying messages, in the mutation of the meaning of iconic images, mixing and remixing forms and symbols in search of new perspectives." - Emanuel Borcescu

In "Schimbul patru" (The Fourth Shift), the artist is concerned with the rusted, twilight spaces of the defunct Romanian industry. Emanuel Borcescu's constant focus is on the recent past that still haunts our collective imagination: the abandonment and disdain we feel towards current Romanian corruption, which, out of petty personal interests, has crippled the Romanian industry. The artist adds a nuance of social criticism; his representations are not merely beautifully painted descriptions of disassembled machinery but carry a subversive charge that speaks about our society, our (in)capacities, and (in)abilities.

Remains of the day: In communist Romania, almost all enterprises operated in three eight-hour shifts - a full day. The fourth shift does not have a time of day following the night, it is not measured in sequential minutes but represents a metaphor of ruin, an abyss of destruction. It suggests the moment after the work hour has ended, the time of transition from a politically oppressive regime, of arduous labor, to a wild capitalism but without industry. It is the time after a hammer has struck an anvil for the last time, but it is also a period of catharsis expressed through a kind of still life and/or landscapes, vanitas with industrial themes, memento mori represented by lead pipes, washers, and screws, large and small machinery, compositions of letter-signs. The dismantled factories have left marks on the flesh of cities, landscapes, and people's lives. Desolate walls and scaffolding that decompose, covered with shards and rubble, with vegetation, and ultimately disappear, prey to fires, bulldozers, general apathy, and some people's greed. A void filled with nostalgia remains behind them. Any ruin contains within it the regret of a bygone time, of lost youth, and what once was represents the dawn, the healthy morning, in its place remains longing. The remnants of now were once active, robust, useful mechanisms. Sic transit gloria mundi! Through his artistic practice, Emanuel Borcescu appropriates the "soul" of these machines, transforming them into signs, (in)writings, language in abstract words, liberating measures. He paints moments of this decline: disfigured engines, industrial residues, remnants of machinery, ruins of the relics of large enterprises. He remains trapped between these abandoned cables, in the narrow space between two lathes, between the dilapidated wall and a broken milling machine, between boilers and emptied and rusted lockers. But it is not only the artist who is trapped between these forms that have dominated the Romanian visual field for the last thirty-five years, even the person who views them is captive and lives in the same modules. The artist's gaze on these disintegrated machines and industrial building interiors is that of an empathetic observer. We could interpret the "rusts" represented as (psychological) portraits of a past world in transition. If Emanuel Borcescu's 2014 drawings in the exhibition “Schlafwagen” commented on the collective journey, the commuters in the “sleeping car” moving through a relic-like space, the works presented here, with the help of a magnifying glass, offer a voyeuristic glimpse into these types of forms that are still oppressive and under which we exist when we become lucid.

"The Fourth Shift" includes two series of works: interior landscapes, portraits of disintegrating industrial equipment, and a number of larger canvases that feature at the boundary of abstract form, fictitious writings, letter-signs whose shape originates from post-industrial landscapes. The artist uses a restrained color palette of colored grays meant to underline the state of abandonment, loss, and nostalgia. As a social project, the documentation, analysis, and representation of these remnants have been a long-standing and constant concern in his artistic practice, resulting in various projects. In 2006, the artist temporarily transformed the already defunct studios of the Romanian Television on Mollière Street, Bucharest, into a creation workshop, participating in the "TVR 50 years" exhibition. In 2010, he visited Petroșani and created a photographic archive of the former industrial city, now dilapidated and abandoned. In 2014, at Magheru One, during the White Night of Galleries, he created charcoal drawings inspired by documentary images from the post-industrial period. Over the years, he has documented photographically several workshops of craftsmen on Gheorghe Țițeica Street in Bucharest, workshops still in operation, which he calls "preserved relics." In 2015 and 2016, he photographed the Faur Bucharest factories, Gate IV, or what was left of them. In 2022, he documented the gradual dismantling of the former IMGB enterprise, near which he coincidentally moved his residence and witnessed its destruction firsthand. On December 24, 2023, the Minister of Labor officially announced that from that day, Romania no longer has an industry.

- Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu

BIO Emanuel Borcescu (born 1980, Râmnicu Sărat) lives and works in Bucharest. He graduated from UNARTE Bucharest, Graphics department. Selected solo exhibitions: 2015 - Garden Miners, Lateral Artspace, Cluj and University Square, Bucharest; 2014 - Schlafwagen, Magheru One; 2011 - "Docmarcell's Immunology Journal," Alert Studio; 2010 - "The Romanian Capitalist Worker's Fresco," Press Square; 2005 - "Heroes," H'Art Gallery; 2002 - "Salvinia," Atelier 35. Selected group exhibitions: 2023 - MoBU Art Fair - Alert Studio stand; 2022 - "Bombs and People," The Art Cell, Carol 53; 2021 - "The Arts Sports Club," MARE; 2018 - MNAC Collection - Seeing History, National Museum of Contemporary Art; 2015 - "Supercontemporary Art" - Cesianu Palace, Artmark; 2010 - Young Artists Biennial, organized by 2Meta Foundation, Știrbei Palace, Bucharest; 2008 - "Visions in the Nunnery," London; 2007 - "Traces: Romanian Contemporary Art," traveling exhibition at: Contemporary Art Center, Pont Aven, France / Robert Else Gallery, California, Selby Gallery, Florida; 2006 - "Export," Goldener Kalb Gallery, Aarau, Switzerland; 2004 - Residency exhibition at Borsos Museum, Gyor, Hungary; 2003 - "Preview," MNAC."