Alfredo Pirri's 'Passi' Installation Opens at Centrul de Interes in Cluj-Napoca

On September 11, 2020, Centrul de Interes in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, inaugurated Alfredo Pirri's large-scale installation 'Passi'. The artist, unable to travel due to the pandemic, realized the work entirely remotely, relying on memory and imagination. Pirri describes the experience as akin to inhabiting the gray, indefinite color that characterizes much of the painting he encountered in Cluj. He notes that the city's painters use mixed, impure colors that tend toward gray—a quality he finds essential and physical rather than decorative. For the installation, he had a wall painted a warm, indefinite gray instead of white, echoing this local chromatic sensibility. Pirri emphasizes that working at a distance has allowed ideas to travel more than bodies, fostering a responsible attitude detached from the artist's persona. Centrul de Interes, founded in 2017, is the largest artistic community in Cluj, comprising six exhibition spaces, project spaces, residencies, and artist studios. It has hosted solo shows by Bill Viola, Jane McAdam Freud, Dmitry Kawarga, Cristi Puiu, and Mircea Suciu, and organizes the annual Performance Day since 2019. Pirri's text responds to a question from Florin Stefan, artist and president of the Federatia Centrul de Interes, about his earlier visit to Cluj and the decision to exhibit there.