Mircea Cantor

b. 1977, Romanian

Biography

Mircea Cantor is Romanian contemporary artist living and working on ‘Earth’ – quoting his artist bio at Dvir Gallery.[1] Cantor is a multimedia artist known for his videos, photography and mixed-media installations.

Born in 1977, Cantor has achieved international recognition for his diverse body of works since the 00s and in particular in the 10s after winning the the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2011. The Romanian artist is part of a generation of artists linked with the the dominant rise of the contemporary art scene in Cluj in the first two decades of the 21st century.

Read everything about this art scene in Cluj you need to know and discover more intriguing Romanian artists from Cantor’s generation here.

As a neoconceptualist, Cantor is known for his evocative and metaphorical works, marked by an attitude of reflection towards a broad world view. Recurring concepts include ideology as such, multivalence, the self and the other. An interplay of meaning arises in his oeuvre characterized by a postmodern multitude of analogies for interpretation, language and categorical concepts as a frame for knowledge and meaning.[2]

Portrait of Mircea Cantor. Photo: Gazette Drouot.

As his artist bio states – living and working on ‘Earth’ – Mircea Cantor has been exhibiting across the globe. Further, beside winning the aforementioned 2011 Prix Marcel Duchamp in Paris, France, Cantor has won the Best Dance Short Film Awards the very same year at the Thiburon International Film Festival in the United States of America; the 2010 Zece Pentru Romania Award by Realitatea TV in Romania; a nomination in 2008 for the Artes Mundi Prize in Wales, the United Kingdom and winning the 2004 Prix Paul Ricard S.A. in Paris, France. More recently, Cantor has been shortlisted for the 2018 Mario Merz Prize in Turin, Italy and has won the 2017 Aspen Leade rship Prize in Bucharest Romania.

As a result, Cantor features in renowned public and private collections such as the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the United States of America; Museum Abteierg, Mönchengladbach, Germany; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; Magazine 3, Stockholm, Sweden; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, the United States of America; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., the United States of America; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the United States of America; the Yvon Lambert Collection, Avignon, France; the Pinault Collection, France; the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy.[3]

Mircea Cantor Books

For further reading on Mircea Cantor we highly recommend the following books:

Mircea Cantor Artworks

Mircea Cantor, Add Verticality To Your Seat (To Socrates), 2018. Cherry tree – 174 × 39 × 39 cm. Courtesy Magazzino, Rome.

Mircea Cantor, Supposing I could hear that sound. Now, 2015. Concrete and two shofars – 200 x 123 cm. Courtesy Dvir Gallery.

Mircea Cantor, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (video still), 2012. HD video, 4 mins. Courtesy Sydney Biennale.

Mircea Cantor, Future Gift, 2014. Concrete – 124.5 × 101.6 × 101.6 cm. Courtesy Magazzino, Rome.

Mircea Cantor, Ti do la mia giovinezza, 2014. Neon – 169 × 33 cm. Courtesy Magazzino, Rome.

Mircea Cantor, All the Zeros from a neverending Haiku, 2015. Romanian Currency (10 bani), cutted – 600 cm. Courtesy Art Encounters Foundation.

Mircea Cantor, Monument for the End of the World, 2006. Wood, MDF, cardboard, windchime, ventilator – 250 × 300 × 300 cm. Edition of 3. Courtesy Magazinno, Rome.

Notes:
[1] Dvir Gallery, Mircea Cantor at http://dvirgallery.com/artist/mircea- cantor/ consulted 25/03/2021.
[2] Artsy, Mircea Cantor at https://www.artsy.net/artist/mircea- cantor consulted 11/01/2021.
[3] Ibidem note 1.

Last Updated on August 1, 2023

Julien Delagrange

Julien Delagrange (b. 1994, BE) is an art historian, contemporary artist, and the director of CAI and CAI Gallery. Previously, Delagrange has worked for the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels, the Jan Vercruysse Foundation, and the Ghent University Library. His artistic practice and written art criticism are strongly intertwined, examining contemporary art in search of new perspectives in the art world.