Antwerp Art Weekend

18 - 21 May 2023

Tudor Bratu

Represented by JOEY RAMONE

Born in 1977 in Bucharest, Romania Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In his work, Tudor Bratu uses photography as a medium to cast the testimonies of truths, snatched from unremarkable, mundane contexts, but which somehow, represent the highest concentration of existence as such. Documentary evidence, cast in a concrete form and assembled from objective and tangible traces, represent the layering of matter and essence of things that have been, are now, and sometimes, of things that are yet to come. The factual and documentary photograph of Tudor Bratu might be seen as a precise incision through the slices of social and cultural context, history and personal narrative, correlated with a specific geographical location.

The Brutality of Fact is a narrative based on family memories and archives, intertwined with reflections on urban architecture and individual testimonies of encounters with Bratu while traveling in Central Europe at the height of the migration crisis in the summer of 2015. In a certain sense, The Brutality of Fact exteriorize the personal narrative and the artist's drama juxtaposing it to the collective history, reliving that experience in a virtual space of the photography.

In The Brutality of Fact, Bratu chooses to work with slide film, a presentation format positioned in between movement and stillness that evokes an intimate and close encounter.

Wandering through Europe, he creates a poignant experience, collecting visual testimonies and reenacting the life of a migrant trying to gain access to a society that is so desired but still unreachable.