Mihai-Aureliu Savin (b. 1995) completed his studies at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design within UNAGE Iași, majoring in Sculpture (bachelor and master). Through his artistic practice, he researches the possible extensions of the artistic medium in search of the performative potential of sculpture. His works invite interrogation of technological and theoretical appropiations in art, the hypothetical originality of artistic production, and the authorities of the art world.
Q&A with Mihai Savin
When did you discover your passion for art and what does art mean to you?
I find it difficult to say that I have “discovered a passion for art”. I would rather say that I have always been (and I consider this to be a childhood trait) interested in communicating things other than the pragmatic. At the same time, I believe that there is a synonymous relationship between ‘art’ and ‘communication’. Of course, perhaps the thing that may alter the above proposed relationship would be that it is the intentionality behind the communicated message that gives different nuances to the two types of performative actions. I understand that it could be argued that art does not only imply processes (actions), but even in the sculptural medium (the one in which I was professionally trained), I believe that human interpretation of artistic production is necessary, in the absence of the latter, the art object reverts back to its material, uninterpreted condition, the process of communication delegated to the object by the artist being nullified by the absence of an audience to interpret the inscribed information (this can perhaps be most easily understood in the case of literature).
Briefly describe yourself: what excites you, what makes you angry?
I don’t think I could say that I am angry at one thing or another, at least not in words. The artistic environment (as materiality and process-related) in which I was formed is less descriptive, and rather muted, almost self-referential. This is not to say that I advocate for an art practice that is hermetic in nature, but rather for experiments that use the grammar of visual language to communicate things that can be interpreted (particularly) in (and for) the space in (and for) which they were made.
Describe your artistic vision.
Working in the extension of the sculptural medium, I could argue that the latter is almost exclusively the vocabulary used (along with the neologisms of recent art technologies and theories), the sources of work being drawn from neighboring fields of study, not originally dedicated to artistic practice.
Explicitly, I try to construct visual exemplifications (through exercises that could be part of the practice of inter-semiotic translations) of theoretical spaces, spaces that are usually exemplified textually in order to communicate human interpretations of realities. Explicitly, I try to turn theoretical spaces (which in the original, non-materialized, are universal, in the mind of the human agent) into aesthetic forms (which also have a strong universal character, in fact, the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, called the concepts “sound-images” or in the original “image acoustique”).
Who has influenced you along the way and how?
I started three faculties, all art (almost a semester of painting in Cluj, a year of graphic design in Iași and, then, bachelor and master in sculpture also in Iași). The same can also be said about my pre-university studies, being between the 9th and 12th grades at the “Octav Băncilă” National College of Art in Iași, in consecutive order, in the industrial design, painting and, later, graphic design departments. Thus, it would be quite difficult to compile a list of people (or events) that influenced me and the way they did it, but I can say that both the teaching staff and the colleagues in the Sculpture specialization of FAVD have contributed substantially to (re-)organize my own artistic studies.
Which of your artworks you like the most and why?
“Monument in real time”: a theoretical self-portrait, a coffin made of tempered glass (the production of which was assigned to a professional agency in computerized glass processing), built according to the dimensions of the body itself, a death of a “specific” author (according to Roland Barthes).
Tell us about a moment in your career so far that made you happy?
The two exhibition projects (CTRL+Z and CTRL+P) of the sculpture students that I coordinated together with two fellow professors from the Sculpture specialization (Dumitru Oboroc and Mihai Vereștiuc). The dialogues, the equal efforts, the actual production and so on were, from my point of view, closer to the practice of an artistic group than to a conventional group exhibition coordinated by teachers.
What do you expect from Accelerator program?
I don’t think I can allow myself to have expectations, the only thing I can say is that I enthusiastically congratulate the initiative and the moral-financial support of contemporary artistic productions in the public space, a space which is, at least in the city where I work, if not reticent, then at least shy in front of the public, the logic of the monument being still the only logic used in local public sculpture.
What artist inspired you and why?
Given the impossibility of originality in artistic practice, as I have come to consider it, I began rather to relate to theorists of art (or other fields) such as Boris Groys, Claire Bishop or Joel Best. Thus, by ‘stealing’, or rather, as it is used in English, ‘appropriating’ ideas and hypotheses from theoretical backgrounds, ‘stealing’ could be argued (of course, with an implicit note of humor) to amount to (inter-semiotic) translation.
What are your future plans?
I am trying to get closer to a point where my own intention occupies (almost) exclusively the space between me and my potential audience. In other words, to succeed in realizing (small-scale) prototypes of realities, as a simulation, in order to be able to communicate, not necessarily obviously, but, at least articulately, to a point of universality of acts of non-verbal communication, a kind of intercultural and transmedia linguistic mediation.