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"Bitzan is the
artist of an island from where he sends messages in bottles,
with the purifying challenge of the object aesthetics"
From the 1997 Venice Biennial
Art Exhibition Catalog
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The Library, 1997 |
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200 X 400 X 40 cm., wood
with inscriptions |
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Ministry of Culture, (Bucharest)
collection |
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Sublime
Nostalgia, 1990 |
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35 X 13cm.
134 pages. Object book |
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Narrow Water
Castle (NIRE) collection |
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Herbarium,
1980 |
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50 X 33cm.
116 pages. Object book - with watercolors on "Letea"
paper collage |
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Biblion,
1994 |
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80
X 135 X 35cm. Object book - mixed media (China ink on paper,
collage, wood) |
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Unknown
collection |
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Object books 1975-1979 |
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Photographed by Emil Huston
in 1979, at Ion Bitzan's studio |
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Sankt Patricius Vagevuur,
1996 |
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120 X 60 X 60cm. Object
book and stand- paper, leather, wood |
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What Ion Bitzan wants to convey to us in his infinitely
varied creation, is the wonder that we should experience in books
or in the act of reading. It is the wonder that children feel
in front of that unique object - the book, unique, yet multiple,
since it opens into itself in the successions of its innumerable
pages. "There's nothing written on them!", a man had
exclaimed at the close of an exhibition of Bitzan's work in New
York: noticing the interest with which the public savored the
endless variety of the artist's inventions...It is either nothing,
or it is everything: a facsimile of exalting virtues...
Dan Haulica
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Honorary President of the International
Association of Art Critics |
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The Continents, 1993 |
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200cm X 300cm, China ink
and watercolor on paper |
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Ministry of Culture, (Bucharest)
collection |
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The land of the body is written, Bitzan suggests as
he ties land to books, word to places. These sites he links to
the salubrious body of Solomon's anonymous betrothed who assumes
the form of a continent. Rich in sensuous metaphors is her landed
loam with its exotica of choice fruits, nard and saffron, calamus,
cinnamon, incense and aloes, the finest spices, honey, sweetmeats,
wine and milk, aromatic herbs, red blossoms that drip myrrh,
verdant vineyards, cypresses, lily of the valley, gold and silver.
All the poetic double-entendre and voluptuousness of the text
suggests Bitzan's work.
Kristine Stiles
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Duke University, Durham, North
Carolina |
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Books from the "Constellations"
series (?) - 1982 |
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(12 books in total in this
series) |
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Aprox. 24cm X 17cm. China
ink on "Letea" paper |
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Bitzan has been fascinated with the book-object since
late 1960s and was one of the first Romanian artists to explore
it as a medium, producing exquisite hand-made papers often covered
in mysterious script. Attracted to "the pulse" of a
book-object's content and the "carnal expression" of
the paper, the covers, the format, the letter characters, he
said: "I would like my objects, resembling books, to probe
the inner universe, the inner richness treasured in thousands
of books worldwide; consequently they could be genuinely true".
Kristine Stiles
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Duke University, Durham, North
Carolina |
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