Curated by Dingy Rig

Peter D. Springberg, MD Vault Gallery
October 2, 2026 – January 3, 2027

Mircea Modreanu’s exhibition centers on a single sculptural work: a glass jar containing a miniature relief landscape. The artwork grows out of Modreanu’s long-standing interest in antiquity, mythology, history, and geography, and it draws specifically on Valea Jiului, his birthplace in northern Romania, a region known for its folk traditions. 

Revisiting a project he began in 2014, Modreanu reimagines his grandmother’s pantry, where jars preserved food, as a vessel that instead preserves memory and landscape. Inside the jar, viewers find a miniature terrain of valleys and ridges that evokes both a specific place and the broader experience of remembered childhood. Because the jar sits at a low height, most visitors must bend or kneel to see inside it, a physical requirement that ties the act of looking to the exhibition’s larger theme of “burden.”

That theme reworks the myth of Atlas. Rather than depicting Atlas’s physical strength in holding up the world, Modreanu reframes the burden as a mental and perceptual one: the modern effort of paying attention and holding experience in mind. A companion series of pencil drawings extends this idea, reinterpreting historical images of crouched, burdened figures drawn from sculpture and architecture and recasting them for a contemporary audience.

This exhibition is curated by Dinghy Rig, a collaborative artist-run art production and exhibition program launched by Aitor Lajarin-Encina and Marius Lehene. This exhibition is the eighth installment of a long-term collaboration with the Museum of Art | Fort Collins, which is hosting the Dinghy Rig shows in what used to be one of the building’s vaults. The project benefits from the generous support of Peter D. Springberg, MD.