NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
We are excited to invite you on Thursday, April 17th, to the opening of the international group exhibition "Notes from Underground" at /SAC @ MALMAISON. Half-exhibition, half-manifest. In a critical moment.
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
/SAC @ MALMAISON, 17.04 - 25.05.2025
with: Justin Baroncea & Cristian Matei, Ioana & Matei Branea, Nicolae Comănescu, Suzana Dan, Angela Ellsworth, Geo-social Analytics Lab, Vadim Ghirda, Dimitrie Luca Gora, Mihai Iepure Górski & Katia Pascariu, Ruxandra Gubernat, Dragoș Lumpan, Agnieszka Polska, Ana Prvački, Tomas Rafa, Oliver Ressler, Ioana Maria Sisea, Federico Solmi, Levan Songulashvili, Jonas Staal, Mircea Suciu, Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot), Trinkova, Codrin Unici, Marco Verhoogt
curated by Charles Moore & Alex Radu
curated by: Charles Moore & Alex Radu
exhibition & graphic design: Justin Baroncea, Maria Ghement, Alexandra Müller
/SAC team: Andreea Chircă, Iulian Cristea, Lidia Dobrea, Anne Lolea, Elena Maxemciuc
Beneath the surface of order lies an undercurrent of instability. Civilization is a performance, a fragile construct upheld by shared illusion, habit, and necessity. Yet, just underneath its polished exterior, another world pulses, one of raw instinct, disillusionment, and subversion. Titled after Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, this exhibition seeks to unravel the tensions between the civilized self and its buried counterpart, between societal constraints and the primal forces they attempt to suppress. (Charles Moore)
''Notes from Underground'' is a subjective and collective exploration about our actual reactions (including the entire range of emotions and thoughts, and their respective externalizations) and what we, as individuals, can do in-front-and-in-the-middle of this increasingly troubling period, when democracies and (common) values are being de/re-constructed/defined. What we, as actors on the artworld's stages (artists, curators etc.), can do with our relative “power of changing the world through art”, without letting it become propaganda. Can art (and the exhibition) become an instrument for fighting against manipulation and populist propaganda? A vaccine? An antidote? For whom? (Alex Radu)
The works: Geo-social Analytics Lab - "Digital Networks of Conspiracy" and Oliver Ressler - „Oil Spill Flag” (Romanian Flag ed. 2025) are presented with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum.
Notes from Underground
by Charles Moore
Beneath the surface of order lies an undercurrent of instability. Civilization is a performance, a fragile construct upheld by shared illusion, habit, and necessity. Yet, just underneath its polished exterior, another world pulses, one of raw instinct, disillusionment, and subversion. Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground”, this exhibition seeks to unravel the tensions between the civilized self and its buried counterpart, between societal constraints and the primal forces they attempt to suppress.
Presented in two parts, mirroring the structure of the book, “Notes from Underground” invites artists to explore the psychological and political landscapes that exist beneath the thin veneer of control. It is a space for rupture, contradiction, and revelation, where art becomes a site of excavation. Through art, we unearth what is hidden, suppressed, or deliberately erased.
The exhibition addresses the structures we call civilization as nothing more than illusions of permanence. Institutions promise stability, yet history is a litany of their inevitable collapse. What happens when these masks slip? When are the comforting fictions of order and progress revealed as fragile and transient? This theme calls for works that embody the aesthetics of ruin, whether that be fractured structures, delicate impermanence, or surfaces bearing the weight of time. It asks artists to explore the duality of public and private selves, to create compositions and visual metaphors that veil and unveil, and to capture the precise moment when stability fractures and chaos seeps in.
To exist underground is to exist in opposition. It is both a retreat and a defiant act of rebellion. It is where the exiled and the unseen gather their strength, where dissent festers and flourishes. The underground is not only a physical space but also a psychological and political one, a realm of hidden narratives and unseen forces, but one also filled with internal conflict, paranoia, and isolation. Artists can reconceive the subterranean as a metaphor, whether that be tunnels, labyrinths, or confined spaces that speak to the interior world. In building layers of imagery within their work, secrets revealed only upon closer inspection, or examining the body itself as a vessel of unspoken histories and quiet defiance of the societal norms we have become complacent with.
Civilization is an act of repression, a space where our instincts are inherently at odds with our societal structures. It demands order, refinement, and control, yet beneath its surface, the primal self-lingers, waiting to emerge. Freud argued that these instinctual drives, when denied, erupt in violence. What happens when this tension reaches its breaking point? These artists explore raw, gestural mark-making, rough textures that resist refinement, and the visceral act of creation as both struggle and release, a space that mirrors the contradiction of authoritarian control and individual agency. Hybrid figures blur the boundaries between human and beast, serving as symbols for the erosion of the civilized self, while performance-based works enact the constant negotiation between constraint and surrender.
Power is at its most insidious when it is invisible. Surveillance, censorship, and propaganda are the tools of a world that seeks control not only over bodies but over memory and truth itself. In questioning the rise of totalitarianism, artists combat the quiet violence of erasure and the distortion of reality through language and media. From monitoring and manipulation to rewriting history altogether, they envision the ways power is employed to maintain its own existence. Text-based works grapple with redaction, omission, and the fragmentation of communication. Digital works mirror the glitches and distortions of propaganda. Who controls the narrative, and who is written out of history? Through their work, artists unearth the mechanisms of control and reclaim the voices that have been suppressed.
“Notes from Underground” disturbs and illuminates as it peels back the layers of illusion that shield us from uncomfortable truths. We must step into the in-between space where identity, power, and instinct collide. Through material, concept, and form, these artists working across all media act as excavators, revealing the fractures beneath our feet and the suppressed voices that echo from below. Let this be an act of unearthing. Let this be an invitation to descend.
pre/text: notes on/from underground
by Alex Radu
Part 1. Notes on context. Confessing an ignorance
I confess, during the past years I’ve kept thinking-hoping that we, as a society, were striving to evolve in a better direction. At least in certain parts of the world, on certain levels - I wouldn’t want to undertake the responsibility (or arrogance) to talk on behalf of others or to assume what the best direction for it would be, but only to confess my own vulnerability. More and more increasingly profound discourses have been emerging and gaining ground all around us – discourses on diversity, equality, on promoting and historically reclaiming them. On necessary recontextualizations that would create a ”disclaimer-frame” around the cultural patrimony, works, symbols, monuments and values originating in times that carry their own gray areas (patriarchal, colonialist). Discourses regarding a world in which we learn to embrace in compositions our differences and the diversities that characterize and enrich our society.
It seemed to me that capitalism and neoliberalism had been progressively bound to acknowledge their own limits and obsolescence as systems, making way for the emergence of newer, more equitable and sustainable policies within all our governing fields. I thought we had accepted the fact that we’re no longer in need of utopias or single narratives that can engage significant parts within societies. And all this while still seeing that certain social inequalities keep deepening and lynchings – unfair wars – keep bursting like dormant volcanoes, while still acknowledging the coexistence of conservative whims within modern societies. I simply deemed them an “underground current” of polarization, running counter to the broader, progressive direction.
And still, amid all the frustration, anguish, failure, anxiety of some - well justified -, amid the ignorance/lack of responsibility of political representatives towards social needs, amid an actual system that anchors its projected future-success upon the until-now-success, amid the failure of the educational system, this “underground movement” has grown and developed into a large reactionary wave. A tsunami. Which populist discourses were quick to maneuver. This dynamic isn’t so different from what can happen, from time to time, inside either one of us…
Part 2. Notes on exhibition-making playing on (dis)illusions
We imagine a series of interconnected exhibitions as a subjective and collective exploration about our actual reactions (including the entire range of emotions and thoughts, and their respective externalizations) and what we, as individuals, can do in-front-and-in-the-middle of this increasingly troubling period, when the way in which democracies and (common) values look like is being de/re-constructed/defined. What we, as actors on the artworlds' stages (artists, curators etc.), can do with our relative “power of changing the world through art”, without letting it become propaganda.
From within the channels of mass communication that resemble propaganda and manipulation, both a goal and a communication strategy emerge; they are based on the efficient identification and populist exploitation of this “underground movement” of dis(-)illusions, disappointments, frustrations (all, sadly, well-justified in and of themselves). A strategy centered on selling a new illusion – one bought over with (black)lists of enemies.
Unlike propaganda, both art and the (unpredictable) experience of art – although making use of illusion themselves – are catalyzers for self-knowledge, for creating individual and collective knowledge, for seeking the truth beyond a direct, textual message.
Naturally, art can unravel discrepancies between the image of reality and reality itself, allowing unlimited space and liberty for individual interpretation and truth-seeking. Interpreting a work/an image (and, implicitly, an illusion) means, at the same time, intuiting the truth hidden within it.
Besides, visual (contemporary) arts are not just about linguistics, but also about their meaningfulness in understanding about our lives and our anxieties in a Present that becomes, in its fast, unpredictable, incessant evolution, as incomprehensible as a hyperobject - even if we attempted to radiograph this very moment and look into it as into a multifaceted image-installation-exhibition developing (dis-)illusions inside a museum.
But can art (and the exhibition) become an instrument for fighting against manipulation and populist propaganda?
A vaccine?
An antidote?
For whom?
Part 3. Notes on stage. Towards an exhibition design
Irresponsibility, ignorance, greed and lust for power have paved the way for leaders to act and speak like madmen, while trying to drive us mad as well, like cartoon characters with minds full of (horror) cartoons on a large, political-circus arena resembling a reality show starring uniform(-)ized hordes of national(ist) flags, that break out of the political realm and threaten to overrun our existence, social and personal life. The exhibition and its space can become a dramatic, tense stage - stretched between this arena and our inner lives - peopled with the thoughts, emotions and dreams of all of us who take part in it.