Stories from the 70s and 80s told through heliographs

Răzvan Anton, an artist from Cluj-Napoca, who opened recently his third exhibition with Gaep Gallery, brings to the spotlight the heliographic technique he used to reproduce images taken between 1968 and 1989.

It shows places and people captured on 8mm film by the artist’s father, digitized several years ago, the artist explains.

”Răzvan Anton: Fading Studies” comprises four sets of works, including a two-channel video – “Archival Study (Places and Portraits)”.

After several years working with public archives such as the Minerva Press Photo Archive, Răzvan Anton began in 2022 to analyze images from his family’s collection, and the works in the exhibition exemplify this shift in his practice.

Starting from the video material, Răzvan Anton first made a long series of heliographs, works exposed to direct sunlight. Two other sets of two heliographs of different sizes complete the presentation.

Fading studies – Places, portraits

“Fading Studies (Places and Portraits)” represents 20 images, “chained in the same logic of places and portraits”. They include both familiar people – family members – and people whom Răzvan Anton could not identify.

It’s a medium he’s been working with for about a decade. “From the moment I started looking at archival materials, I started looking for alternative development processes. And that’s how I came up with this daylight developing process.”

After choosing a frame from the movie, Răzvan Anton processes it so that it can be printed on transparent film, the size of the printed image, and at the same time prepares a sheet – in this case A3 – which is hatched with a blue, photosensitive pen.
“Then I leave them hanging on the windows for a month or a month and a half.The blue pigment discolors and from the foil it transfers to paper. There are some templates, photograms.” The work was started in 2023 and carried out over about six months, with completion in 2024.

About Răzvan Anton

Răzvan Anton (b. 1980, lives and works in Cluj-Napoca) graduated with an MA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts in London, after undergraduate and MA studies at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca.

His works have been included in exhibitions at MGML – Match Gallery (Ljubljana, 2021), Motorenhalle/riesa efau (Dresda, 2019), Politecnico di Milano – Galleria del Progetto (Milan, 2019), the 15th edition of the Havana Biennial (2024) and the Art Encounters Biennial (Timisoara, 2017), among others.

Prior to Fading Studies (2025), Gaep presented two solo exhibitions of his work: “Studies of Gaze” (2020) and “Mnemonics” (2015). Răzvan Anton was artist in residency at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna and at the House near the Synagogue (Mediaș), within the project “Absence as Heritage/ Traces”.

The exhibition is open until April 12 at the Gaep Gallery and can be visited from Thursday to Saturday, from 11:00 to 19:00.