Invitro

04/10/2026

ꜱᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴀʟ ꜱᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ — extended through October 25

A few views from the exhibition developed by STOL Collective at INVITRO Cluj, bringing together works by Anio Ciutac, Ioana Mincu, Lena Ciobanu, Maëlle Tocaben, Mara Verhoogt, Marco Verhoogt, Nadina Stoica, Sebastian Mihăescu and Yethan Atha.

Curated by Marco Verhoogt, the exhibition began with an invitation to imagine an apocalyptic scenario — war, ecological catastrophe, nuclear emergency, or another crisis forcing us to leave our homes — and to consider what we might choose to take with us.

From this premise, STOL transformed INVITRO Cluj into a fictional shelter: a temporary home for imagined survivors and the objects they chose to bring with them. A beehive, a fidget toy, a talisman for finding food, a baseball bat pierced with pencils, an already distressed hat — objects somewhere between necessity, memory, protection and absurdity.

Curator: Marco Verhoogt
With ioana • mara • marco • anio • sebi

📷 Photo credit: Madalin Margaritescu / YAP studio | Art & Architecture

16/09/2026

10/06/2026

At the beginning of the year, Marco Verhoogt invited several people to participate in an apocalypse roleplay. He asked them to imagine a scenario in which war, ecological catastrophe, nuclear emergency, or another crisis had forced them to leave their homes.
Continuing on this premise, STOL developed this exhibition creating in the space of Invitro a fictional shelter or encampment: a temporary home for these imagined survivors and the objects they chose to bring. The installation gathers works by different artists - objects for the apocalypse - including a beehive, a fidget toy, a talisman for finding food, a baseball bat pierced with pencils, an already distressed hat…

29/12/2025

INVITRO began as a gesture of proximity.
Before becoming an exhibition space, INVITRO emerged from long-term relationships with artists and galleries — from years of looking, learning, collecting, and staying close to artistic practices as they evolve.
Founded in 2019, INVITRO was conceived as a space where invited galleries and curatorial voices from other cities and countries could temporarily relocate their programs, bringing with them distinct contexts, ethics, and rhythms of work.
Six years later, this intention has taken form through 25 exhibitions.
Operating as a bicephalous organism, INVITRO unfolds through two equally active exhibition spaces — in Bucharest and Cluj.
From INVITRO Bucharest (Malmaison) to INVITRO Cluj (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), the platform has functioned as a site of encounter: between artists and audiences, between local scenes and other geographies, between generations, media, and ways of working.
In 2025, this ongoing process unfolded through six exhibitions:
— Daniel Moldoveanu – Rude Awakening, at Celulele INVITRO Bucharest
— Radu Comșa – Blue, at INVITRO Cluj
— Jonas Staal – Scaleless Models, curated by Mihnea Mircan, at Salonul de Proiecte
— George Semeniuc – Recent paintings (maybe “The Dinner”), at Celulele INVITRO Bucharest
— Stefano Calligaro – Poetricks (Big and Smalls), at INVITRO Cluj
— **Ștefan Ungureanu | George Anghelescu – Kenopsia and Metanoia (ongoing), at INVITRO Cluj
Together, these projects reaffirmed INVITRO’s commitment to artistic research, experimentation, and sustained dialogue — while allowing different curatorial, artistic, and gallery voices to temporarily inhabit its framework.
What connects these exhibitions is not a style or a theme, but a way of working:
listening closely to artists, respecting the autonomy of collaborators, and allowing exhibitions to remain open, porous, and alive.
As the year draws to a close, we look back not to summarize, but to acknowledge continuity:
25 exhibitions, 6 years of work, and a network of relationships still in motion.
INVITRO remains an open structure.
The archive stays active.
The work goes on.

09/12/2025

Kenopsia and Metanoia | Ștefan Ungureanu și George Anghelescu
Curator: Dan Popescu

Ștefan Ungureanu and George Anghelescu are millennials. What is the specific difference of Gen Y artists from their predecessors? To my mind, it is something that pertains to how⎯most of them being urban⎯they relate to the future and the past. To Gen Ys, the past does not carry the dramatic power of tradition, and the future is regarded with a mixture of optimism and melancholy. The present exhibition proposes two examples of affective-axiological visual positioning in relationship with the future and the past.

Kenopsia is the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people and life but is now empty and quiet. It is one of those feelings for which one would not even suspect that there is a term to describe it. Ștefan Ungureanu comes up with an image which captures this feeling and makes it even more ineffable, in mental landscapes which clearly suggest a fictional future. Despite looking like a landschaft reminiscent of a desert in Arizona, it bears the traces of a human terraforming and of a living which is still smoking, or which can still be glimpsed. It is the image of the melancholy of the future.

George Anghelescu points up the way millennials relate to the past. Reiterating a previously expressed idea, to Gen Ys the past is either something to be ignored or left behind by embracing the countless injustices. Visual metanoia is George’s obsession. No nation remains untainted by its history, and Anghelescu proposes in each constructed image a tension between horror and beauty which works better than many history treatises.
(Text: Dan Popescu / Translation: Bertha Savu)