Art Encounters Biennial My Rhino is Not a Myth: art science fictions

Various venues, Timişoara 19 May-16 July

- Oliver Basciano

In the disused transport depot of Timişoara, western Romania, three large inflatable textile sculptures by Anetta Mona Chișa, which mimic the shape of nuclear atoms, describe their own demise. From hidden speakers, a high-pitched childlike voice, purporting to be that of ununennium, a hypothetical element not yet fully catalogued on the periodic table, narrates some sort of Armageddon situation. Across the overgrown yard, inside one of the rusting old maroon-and-beige city trams, is another series of sculptures, these ones by Cristian Răduță, in which the passengers and drivers of the vehicle have been replaced by oversize mutant animals crudely assembled out of card, tape and haphazard found materials. A spindly-legged bird, a big yellow dog, a humanoid rabbit wearing boxing gloves-given the dereliction of the yard, the decay of the vehicle and their Frankenstein form, together they inhabit the vehicle like the last survivors of some terrible trauma.