Vlad Nancă (b. 1979, Bucharest) undertook studies in the Department of Photography and Moving Image at the National University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania. With works spanning the past two decades, Vlad Nancă’s recurrent use of grids, ceramic tiles, mosaic, houseplants, mirrors, and slightly distorted vernacular objects from Socialist Romania set numerous layers of history and materiality in motion. In this juncture between abstract and concrete, between reflection and landscape, memory and construct, his recent practice references at once utopian architects like Italian Superstudio and their continuous grid, ideas of flat earth maps, as well as predefined notions of the former East and former West. His early works employ political and cultural symbols, evoking nostalgia and investigating the tension between public and domestic spaces, all against the backdrop of Romania and Eastern Europe’s recent history and the aggressive capitalism of the early 2000s. His current body of works examines the notion of space (from architecture and public space to outer space) through forging constellations of subjectivities, sculptures and installations.
Selected solo and group exhibitions: THE HORIZONTAL WALL (2023), Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, Romania; A map of the world as seen by him (2022) ICA Sofia, Bulgaria; The meaning of sculpture (2020), Kunsthalle Bega, Timisoara, Romania; Vis a vis (2019), solo show, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, Romania; The city and the City (2019), KVOST- Kunstverein Ost, Berlin, Germany; IT HAPPENS, duo show with Luca Resta curated by Paola Tognon (2018), Galleria II Ponte, Florence, Italy; In the Natural Landscape the Human is an Intruder (2018), Sabot Gallery, Cluj, Romania; Souvenirs from Earth (2015), Calina – Contemporary Art Space, Timisoara, Romania.