[...] Due to Georges Vigarello and a team of French historians we know how radical differences were between the 19th Century and our time in terms of hygiene. Amongst many other examples it is mentioned that while in the 19th Century it was prohibited to take a hot bath more often that once a month, today we have shampoos and shower gels specially designed to frequent use - even twice a day. In those smilingly superficial facts lies practically a fundamentally different system of medical and theological convictions: in the 19th Century the temperature and the weight of water had an important role in curing diseases and those qualities of water were connected to pleasures or abstinences. Mihai Platica’s works propose an investigation into those techniques and our ability to observe and show them. So perplexingly simple and complex, the body is the core interest of these works, whose method is its meticulous observation and documentation. They want the viewer to stop by the surface of things, by the body as the surface of humans. The unknown is hidden in the surface. Mihai Platica’s works are an anthropological investigation about the body as a cultural given. [...] (Anna Keszeg)

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view from the exhibiton