Born

1951 , Oradea , Romania

Education

1976 – gratuated from the ” Ioan Andreescu ” Art Institute, Cluj-Napoca

1984 – member of the ” Atelier 35 ” art group ( a contemporary art based group and partially underground due to the comunist regime)

Teaching

1976-1980 – art teacher at the ” Arts and crafts” highschool, Oradea

1991 – lecturer at the “Ioan Andreescu” Art Institute , Cluj

1992-1995 – lecturer at the Visual Arts Faculty , Timisoara

1996-present – assistant profesor at the Visual Arts Faculty , Oradea

Exhibitions

1977 – Republican youth exhibition, Bucharest

1983 – ” Dantesca ” biennal at Ravenna, Italy

1984 – ” Mobil : Foto I ” , ‘Atelier 35‘ exhibition, Mercur gallery , Oradea

1985 – ” Human body expresion ” ,  ‘Atelier 35‘ exhibition,Mercur gallery , Oradea

1986 – ” UAP Oradea” exhibition at Bucharest (Sala Dalles), Constanta , Iasi , Cluj

1986 – ” Mobil : Foto II ” , ‘Atelier 35‘ exhibition, Mercur gallery, Oradea

1986 – ” ‘Atelier 35‘ Oradea” exhibition , ‘Helios’ gallery , Timisoara

1988 – ” ‘Atelier 35‘ Oradea” exhibition , ‘ Home of the arts ‘ gallery , Bucharest

1989 – ” ‘Atelier 35‘ Oradea” exhibition ,UAP gallery, Cluj

1989 – Personal exhibition , ‘ Orizont ‘ gallery , Bucharest

1991 – Contemporary arts festival ” State without title ” , Timisoara

1991 – ” Alegory 1 ” performance festival, Bistrita

1992 – International performance symposium, Vac , Hungary

1992 – International performance symposium , Bratislava, Nove Zamky – Slovakia; Karlovy-Vary – Czech Rep.

1993 – International performance symposium, Timisoara

1993 – ” Alegory 2″ performance festival, Bistrita

1993 – destroys most of his work and archive and retires

… 15 years of  ” silence “…

2009 – ” Square’s temptations ” , solo exhibition , ‘ Grotto ‘ gallery , Oradea

2009 – “B,O,N,E. square 2” solo exhibition , ‘ Visual art gallery ‘ , Oradea

2009 – ” Expansion” , solo exhibition,  ‘East mill’ gallery, Oradea

Bibliography

- ” Experiment in Romanian art since 1960 ” , Alexandra Titu , Magda Carneci

Soros Center for Contemporary Art, 1997

- ” The art of the 1980′s in Eastern Europe. Texts on postmodernism” , Magda Carneci

Paralela 45 , Bucharest

- ” Art in Romania, 1945-1989 ” , Magda Carneci

Meridiane Publishing house , Bucharest

- ” Texts on the 80′s generation in the field of visual art ” , Adrian Guta

Paralela 45 , Bucharest

- ” Actionism in Romania During the Communist Era ” , Ileana Pintilie

Idea Design &Print Publishing house , Cluj

Description

The Oradean born sculptor Rudolf Bone is one of the talents of “Atelier 35”, a nationwide young artists’ movement of the 80s generation in Romania. The Oradean section of it made it to the most important artists’ group of the time, cultivating a form of art with experimental character. Constrained to remain “underground” by the communist regime, “Atelier 35” got to deal with the disadvantages, but also the trumps of their status: no financial support – but no ideological and formal interference from the regime either. What emerged from it was an art at western level and with universal preoccupations.

The artistic creation of sculptor Rudolf Bone is dominated, at the level of expression, of the choice of the material and the genre as well as of the themes and topics by a constant interrogation about the truth in art, about its caducity and consequently about its function.

Following his years as a student at the Academy of Art in Cluj, Rudolf Bone is more and more preoccupied with the symbolism of forms in popular art, as carrier of vigour, of a sincerity which the artist wishes to induce to his own art.

Between 1982 and 1984 he crafts abstract symbolic works such as the cycle Cosmogony, made of granite, volcanic stone, travertine and combined with oak wood. The chosen topic as well as the aesthetic of the stones refers to the primordial and pure state of the beginning, to the “Creation”.

Confronted with the political and social reality of the Ceausescu Era the art of the sculptor got a subversive note.

The political persiflage and social critique are messages conveyed in forms with a playful character and great freedom of expression.

“L’objet trouvé” is the ideal mean for Rudolf Bone to express social and political critique. Extracted out of the social circuit these objects are rich in references and allusions to specific contexts. For example the cone in the child’s head in his work Childhood.

Furthermore, by extending the sense of “objet trouvé” the sculptor “redescovers” objects in current life and revaluates some of their valences, integrating them into the language of his art, as a kind of “objet retrouvé”.

Such are the funnels for example, these carpenter tools from the workshop of his father, which he  reuses in order to create works of art with a strong impact through their spatiality and structure, enhanced through the connotation of these tools expressing tensions, coercions, contortions and also tortures, all inherent aspects of the regime. (Rearing up, Determination)

Or there is the  plane integrated in his work the Orator, with its grinding tongue, allusion to the wooden language promoted by the regime and its propaganda.

From this point, the artistic approach of Rudolf  Bone proceeds to a new stage “the (st)age of glass”. The glass is exhibited in statical mode, in installations. It is also used in happenings in which its breaking develops the idea of its ephemeral chractacter and caducity, the idea of an art in progress (and, implicitly, of destruction), characteristics of postmodern art. By the breaking of glass, as (Panspermie, Haiku, pOM, or Valurile-Thalassa) Panspermy, Haiku,  pOM – here is a word game as POM means tree and OM means human being- and Waves, the artist is tackling an interesting idea, central for the artistic creation: the attachment of the artist to his own creation, to which Rudolf Bone sets a forceful counterpoint. The ephemeral object has no chance to develop itself into cult. The acoustical effect of the breaking glass is carrier of a strong message: the force of the moment impresses itself deeply into the viewer’s perception. The viewer carries from now on the moment inside himself and has no more the “luxury” to come back to the exhibition to see the object again.

The installations of Rudolf Bone express the idea of momentariness in artwork, an idea he develops by using  perishable materials. The artist renounces to “crush down stones and bend woods” and continues to distil the artistic material, composing works with sand, aluminium foil, water, living fishes and plants having mythical and lyrical topics such as Eclosion, Gaia(Mother Earth)…All of them carry a core of the philosophy of Plato about the world, a nostalgia of the “beginnings”, the wish to return to the “source”, to the pure state of “Ideas”.

In the range of the works in progress with glass breaking, the art of Rudolf Bone becomes more and more confrontational without any ostentation. His physical involvement in his own happenings is a call for participation and involvement. A secondary message of his happenings is that of arousing from the somnolence and general isolation characteristical for the communist times.

So he gets to the stage of “Performance” in which he often develops considerable physical efforts. In his last performance Eclosion before retiring from the artistic activity for the next 15 years, he has fastened himself with a rope and drowned himself up using a pulley beyond the door of the church of Bistrita shouting from the top: “ the artist Bone died, live Rudolfangelo”. This was a symbolical gesture.With this performance Rudolf Bone concluded his activity in 1993, considering his artistic path (as a path of initiation to the Truth) as completed.

15 years of silence followed, time for meditation. During this period Rudolf Bone gives his experience and creativity to new generations – he works as an art teacher at the Faculty of Visual Arts in Oradea.

But he will not remain the unfruitful tree, and this silence will blossom. His come back exhibition in 2009 is entitled “The temptations of the Square”

His disposition for creative playfulness and for the abstract-aesthetical form remained unchanged. He continues his preoccupations for “setting free” the form from the matter and for the play of the form between the dimensions of the space; therefore, “The temptations of the Square” proposes a polymorphic sculpture as a new approach to the sculpture, with a great potential to be “redescovered” from each angle and to be reconfigurated in multiple formal equations. Precisely this multitude of forms – which the Square in movement can express out of its hidden stock of latent forms – matches on the philosophical level the preoccupation of the artist for the ephemeral and the illusion of art and for the interaction between the world of Ideas and that of manifestation.  Rudolf Bone tries to “set free” the form from the material, conceiving forms of a great richness with a minimal use of material, in which the contours evoke the feeling of fullness.

By inducting motion to the Square, the sculptor Bone is exploiting his interest for the transformation of the form, from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional. Combined with the time factor as fourth dimension, he engages the form into a prolific game between the two-, three- and four-dimensional.

On the line of the Ephemerides, the sculptor Bone develops a work of art into a dialogue with the “Ideas”. For this, we wish him even more inspiration and creativity, and we hope that he will be as productive as his Square, which is developing unlimited new forms.

Irine Conti