Ursu?a’s anachronistic artifacts transport viewers into a realm of ancient tropes, grotesque votives and scarred bronze figuresRomanian artist Andra Ursu?a (born 1979) draws from the visual language and display strategies of archaeological museums to invent faux-historical artifacts belonging to a defunct civilization whose relics seem to speak to the anxieties of our present. Apocalypse Now and Then documents the titular site-specific installation in Hydra, Greece, wherein Ursu?a displayed fragments of sculptures and studio detritus that had been successively built up and destroyed with analog and digital tools, including Desolation Ware, a series of lost-wax cast bronze sculptures. In addition to ample installation shots, the volume explores the work’s themes—such as the history of object-making and sculpture and the ways in which this manually derived system of knowledge and speculation has come to shape our visual world—in new texts by DESTE founder, Dakis Joannou, curator Elena Filipovic and the artist herself.
