100,000 sqm of industrial site, activated through art. The UZUC Factory is preparing to welcome the public. Photo gallery of the first murals completed

Over 100 artists transform the UZUC Factory in Ploiești into a temporary museum

100,000 sqm of industrial site, activated through art. The UZUC Factory is preparing to welcome the public. Photo gallery of the first murals completed

Over 100 artists from Romania and around the world are presenting their art in Ploiești, in preparation for the fifth edition of the Urban Art Annual, Artown NOW. The UZUC Factory, the only industrial site in Romania reshaped through art on this scale, becomes the (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum, a museum in which the main exhibition is the creative process itself: working with paint, trial and error, decisions, conversations, and the time it takes for an idea to take shape.

“I’ve taken part in over 200 festivals around the world, and I can say with certainty that the Artown team is the best team I’ve ever met. I think that’s also one of the reasons why what’s happening here is extraordinary. UZUC Factory is a truly unique and remarkable place, of extraordinary importance for the art world, for people, for the city, but also for the entire cultural sector,” said artist Spenser Little (USA), in Ploiești for the first time.

At UZUC, artists start from what the factory offers them. Sculptures, installations, and text and portrait interventions are made from pieces salvaged from the factory halls, giving the place a new identity. Brazilian artist Adriano Bohra, known as Robolito, carves wood and paints three industrial cylinders, while Spenser Little (United States) shapes metal, having already completed around 20 interventions with texts and portraits. Misha Diaconu (Romania) sculpts and welds metal, while ceramicist Liliana Maria, from Ploiești, completes the same piece with porcelain. Italian architects Andrea Ariano and Pietro Dalbianco turn materials found around the factory into chairs, benches, a stage and a DJ booth, while Canadian artist Aurelia Bizouard and poet Ciprian Apetrei, from Ploiești, together build an installation inside one of the factory halls. Italian artist Giovanni Magnoli also brings to Ploiești Iconosaik – a spectacular technique that produces hand-painted works precisely reproducing the look of ancient and Byzantine mosaics. From a distance, they appear to be built from thousands of tesserae, but the surface is, in fact, painted.

“It’s an extraordinary project. I’m sorry I’ll have to leave this place, but I’ll leave with great joy for everything I’ve experienced and for the work I had the chance to do in Ploiești,” states artist Giovanni Magnoli.

What is the (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum?

A museum that only exists for as long as it is inhabited. As long as the artists and visitors are there, the factory becomes a museum, then returns to its working rhythm. It is temporary, because it functions as a museum only for the duration of the edition. It is contra-temporary, because the traces (murals, sculptures, interventions) remain permanent. And it is contemporary, because it brings together artists and practices from art today.

The UZUC Factory has a history of over 120 years and spans 100,000 sqm, being the only industrial site in Romania reshaped through art on this scale. Over 3,000 people worked here, and among other things, the UZUC halls produced the spheres of the Atomium, Brussels’ famous symbol. Today, the factory’s activity continues on a smaller scale, and part of the factory’s surface has become a creative hub, hosting music studios, furniture and auto workshops, a print shop, and even the country’s only manufacturer of highway barriers.

Artown NOW activates 50,000 sqm of the total surface through art. The approximately 2,600 sqm covered by murals completed in this edition are just part of the story, with another 100 murals and over 350 artistic interventions having been completed from 2022 to the present.

Continuous Studio #11 Republica Artelor: Dumitru Gorzo’s studio arrives at the factory

For one month, artist Dumitru Gorzo is moving his studio to UZUC. Continuous Studio is part of a traveling project that Gorzo started in 2019, in New York: a temporary studio that moves from one place to another and becomes, each time, a living space for work, meeting and dialogue. Ploiești is the 11th stop, throughout the month of September (September 1–30). Here, the public can meet Gorzo while he works in one of the halls they can come in, watch, ask questions and follow how a work takes shape. Gorzo is one of the most active contemporary visual artists in Romania, with a practice spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, installation and public space intervention. Visits are by appointment, on weekends.

UZUC – (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum is presented by Kraftanlagen and IPIP, partners who have been alongside the project since its first edition. Kraftanlagen, whose director Costel Lungu did his early years of training in similar production areas, sees at UZUC an industrial space brought back to life, and managing partner Mark Wrobel brings a perspective from Berlin, where the cultural reactivation of factories is a natural practice. Alongside Florin Mihalcea, director of IPIP, a Romanian company from the same group, considers that the revitalization and reconstruction underlying their business is the point that connects them with what Artown NOW is doing at UZUC.

Industrial partner WDP warehouses with brains was one of the voices that pushed the project toward the factory, and this year Artown NOW is completing its third mural in one of the company’s halls, after Dragomirești and Chitila. All these initiatives are also made possible with the support of Ploiești City Hall, which believes in UZUC’s potential to become a cultural landmark for the city.

UZUC – (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum can be visited until September 12, from Friday to Sunday, between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM. Guided tours take place every weekend day, during the first part of the schedule. Access is from Str. Marin Brutaru no. 14.

Artists are working on-site between August 24 and September 12, and the finished works will be part of the public program of the Urban Art Annual, Artown NOW, from September 18 – October 4.