The discourse articulated in the Artep Gallery extends a long-standing artistic research on the concept of necropolitics advanced by Achile Mbembe, which denotes the use of political power to calculate the profitability of life and "dictate who can live and who must die". It also artistically transposes the indications of T. J. Demos regarding the military-industrial complex (encapsulated by concepts such as "capitalocene/thanatocene") which determines the planetary anthropogenic effects on the natural environment camouflaged under the much more familiar geological concept of "Anthropocene". The pun in the title put forward by Radu Carnariu suggests both the perpetual procedural aspect and the inherent limitations of critical discourse in the context of the full assimilation of art in the show and luxury industry, as well as the increasingly acute constraints that vitally affect life especially in underdeveloped regions, but rich in natural resources, which become areas of global conflict between the great powers in international politics.

Especially known for his critical interventions on the imaginary and the signification system specific to advertising, this time Radu Carnariu puts forward a multimedia installation that is both playful and sarcastic, with elements that evoke the vocabulary of pop art and the semiotics of social criticism projects from the beginning of the current millennium. In the composition of the exhibition space, he combines graphic interventions with painting, object, sound works and short video interventions. In this carefully elaborated scenography, the exhibition also opens a space for collaboration with four other invited artists – Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu, Alexandra Ghioc, Mircea Modreanu and Mihai Zgondoiu –, whom Radu Carnariu asked to respond poetically to their own works. Under the guise of derision and cynicism, the exhibition invites us to a serious meditation on slow violence, the effects of war on the climate and natural ecosystem, and the pressure of fair redistribution of natural resources.

Cristian Nae