The somehow imposing vegetal wilderness within the garden of Launloc gallery is rather like a catalyst for an urgent affection (of the still surprised gazed from 80s sitcoms, maybe). I would simultaneously project the most perverted, decadent nomadism as well as, hear this!, the most authentic around the idea of obscene abundance / familiar luxury. Or perhaps this super sentimentaloid and sweet mix was intuitively perfecting a future block of energies along with the dwelling on various levels of humor and aesthetic slides from within the installation-exhibition Overthinking how to make a tea.

The gap between gestures and dyslexia makes way for courage or, in any case, something much more immaterial than what would be required of one to take action. The rumination (of a violent gamer on a flash of love?) – a new theme for New Age spiritality – is an advantage (according to one poet) – if we were to theorize the works of Romanițan Nicolae, Dan Beudean, Andriana Oborocea, Tușinean, Cristian, Țigăreanu Matei, Sebastian Big, Ionuț Șerdean, Mihai Pop, Kero, Ocu, KFH. In the mental space of the hologram, based on the new globally imposed rhythm of the holorhyme (actualized in hip hop by the very fresh and talented Kendrick Lamar), narrative thought dies within seconds. But the prelude is still overflowing in Overthinking how to make a tea; although it is enriched and gypsified by color choruses and dubious overlappings, all of which hyper-unkempt or insolent to be exposed on transmission levels.

Similar to a pop-video, the exhibition was inaugurated with a softy ostentation: a layer of long, colored balloons, the true stems of this world, seasoning the long line of artworks. The thing that better fictionalized any final affective diagnosis, placed in a first tour of the gallery, was that certain objet trouvé drowning in a sea of artificial grass: a kind of yellow protuberance of soft plastic – placing the exhibition most poignantly in a pragmatic (along with the most recent post human theories) S.F. area (dare I say it). The mini-installation was coherently humming a broken-melancholic collage of Counter Strike (?) screenshots and “poetic statements” applied with a touchy or ironic effect.

By analyzing superficial reactions and control-manufactured emotions, a French therapist actually ends up archaeologizing violence. There was an attempt to amusingly apply aesthetics to chaos (no one knows where / how, but every now and then it becomes bafflingly beneficial). The exhibition captured an interesting area of the hyper-vaped vaporwave: sarcasm. I was mostly interested in the coherence of this line, together with the S.F. infra-insertions. Rightly so, I got an intense experience from the big junk disco mantra, a composite-installation of many hands (ironically painted cut-outs, surrounded by a circle of… salt). One’s attention is altered in a similar alien way by the Hindi proto-goddess from one of the room’s walls and the ubiquitous eyes from between the works.

Testing this nostalgic component of the vapor aesthetic, with 3D glasses and well anchored to the desire of, paradoxically, absorbing as much sense as possible (that goes beyond the sensationalism of each work’s gag), I stopped in front of an innocent old-school poster: Tarzan – the fibrate man with an impeccable face, submerged in a clump of tremendously well edited jungle. From under the lenses, everything seemed more bombastic, the fake liana managed to get a healthy laugh out of me, leaving behind the invasive memory of Donna Harraway’s theories on ’50s and ’60s aesthetic-ethical violence (long blondes hugging empath “human-like” monkeys – “children” gave their life meaning etc – when, in fact, such a profound friendship, although hyper-hypocritical and unjust towards the jungle, basically subordinated animals to a human relationship kind of logic in a stupid and violent way). The poster was, obviously ironically funny, seasoned with a micro-dome of mimetic badges with Heart of Jungle.

I admit I have a fetish for the tactics of collages, with its late yet simultaneously disconcerting effect for the viewer, the most faithful approximation of chaos, as a theorist would say. The fucked up effect of mantras by some of the works in Overthinking how to make a tea also reflected something more, something that is more profoundly liked to the generational history: it’s that post Daria tonality (a creation of post-internet art which enthusiastically activates in galleries too, publishing books in an old-school format – like the PhD thesis of a resident I’ve been debating with lately), but also post music or theory; that lay-low type of thinking, humiliatingly sharp all the same. The “antisocial extroverts”, to quote the working mainstream.

Overthinking how to make a tea was at Launloc gallery in Cluj.