PictorialArt

For Tiberius Adet, the theme is a pretext rather than an iconographic stake. Thus, his paintings swing between figurative and a certain type of abstract, in the sense that various recognizable forms, often geometric, are chromatically derived, becoming metaphorically speaking, windows to possible (other) non-objective artworks. The artist ingeniously treats various concrete areas as textures. I draw attention to the relations between part and whole, whether we are dealing with refined graphic details or intrusive interventions (floating layers applied later in compositions, which change their dynamics).

Mihnea Badea’s personal exhibition, “Apostasy XXI”, organized in December 2023 at the UAP Ploiesti Galleries, brings up a series of fundamental issues regarding the position of man in relation to faith, morality and ethics, in a historical and anticipative perspective.
In the creation of the artist, the theme occupies the central place, prevailing over the technical means. Thus, the line and chromatic meet and intertwine organically, complementing each other. In principle, in painting the color is subordinated to the drawing, the artist often intervening on his canvases in the idea of highlighting the visual signs and motifs imagined, instituted in real scenographic icons.

Viorica Jahn did not choose abstraction as a way of artistic expression, because in the world people used to paint and still paint abstractly, but because this approach is an identity factor for her. The color, unaltered by themes and subjects, represents the ideal opportunity for the artist to reconcile her inner states with the outside, seen by her as a universal self. Due to this extremely particular vision, the viewer can find himself in the artworks she proposes, which do not speak especially about her, but actually formulate interrogations about the nature of the being.

Characterized by a single word, the painting of Dorel Petrehuș is, before anything else, alive. Literally, the artist uses intense colors, often pure, related by strong contrasts, and figuratively organizes his compositions in an organic way. For the show to be total, its signs are basically anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, in that order. In other words, man is the measure of all things in his creation.

Characterized by a single word, the painting of Dorel Petrehuș is, before anything else, alive. Literally, the artist uses intense colors, often pure, related by strong contrasts, and figuratively organizes his compositions in an organic way. For the show to be total, its signs are basically anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, in that order. In other words, man is the measure of all things in his creation.

Characterized by a single word, the painting of Dorel Petrehuș is, before anything else, alive. Literally, the artist uses intense colors, often pure, related by strong contrasts, and figuratively organizes his compositions in an organic way. For the show to be total, its signs are basically anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, in that order. In other words, man is the measure of all things in his creation.

Characterized by a single word, the painting of Dorel Petrehuș is, before anything else, alive. Literally, the artist uses intense colors, often pure, related by strong contrasts, and figuratively organizes his compositions in an organic way. For the show to be total, its signs are basically anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, in that order. In other words, man is the measure of all things in his creation.

Characterized by a single word, the painting of Dorel Petrehuș is, before anything else, alive. Literally, the artist uses intense colors, often pure, related by strong contrasts, and figuratively organizes his compositions in an organic way. For the show to be total, its signs are basically anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, in that order. In other words, man is the measure of all things in his creation.

Liviu Epuraş’s artworks can be classified in numerous styles and currents, most of them derived with the prefix “post”, but regardless of the materials, techniques or diversity, sometimes leading to divergence of the proposed images, they have as common denominator the fact that whether or not they seduce the viewer, they cannot go unnoticed. In his creation, the monumental and the miniature coexist peacefully and even harmoniously. Moreover, one can see the same hand, but also vision in all his objects, sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings or collages.

One of the most surprising contemporary Romanian graphic artists from the point of view outlined above, is, in my opinion, Răzvan Dragoș. A characterization by only a few attributes would look like this: unmistakable by theme, approach, manner, conception, artist who works clearly, orderly, clean, logical. His relative youth (under thirty at the time of writing) recommends him as a winning bet.

The exhibition “Phantasmagoria” (2014), signed by Raluca Arnăutu and organized by Anaid Art Gallery, brought together forty artworks made in a span of two years. What caught my attention was the theme that the artist had announced since 2012 through an exhibition, “Zoolandia”, hosted by the same gallery.

Represented as part of normality in Egyptian culture, the nude becomes for the ancient Greeks, later for the Romans, a symbol of human virtues. In the Early Middle Ages, nakedness represents humility, or rather humiliation, decay. Adam and Eve, related to the Fall Into Sin (as an iconographic theme), the Crucifixion or putti (ornamental angels) are among the few opportunities to represent nudity. With the Renaissance, ancient values are rediscovered, the valences of the nude developing exponentially.

Cristian Diţoiu’s new exhibition can be defined rather by what it is not, than by what each commentator, even relatively informed, assumes to be. At a purely descriptive level, we are dealing with colored squares, arranged on various backgrounds, in turn, rectangular in shape. The golden ratio, constant in the artist’s algorithm, a morphological system that is both non-random and post-minimalist, is not a real stake of the works, as are the chromatic values and the tonal relations between them.

Bucharest was not, is not and never will be of Eugen Raportoru, I mean, from a political, administrative or economic point of view, the artist delimiting himself from opportunism, fame and brand, in favor of painting, a sincere and honest painting, from which he removed any trace of spectacle, anecdote or story. His vision of the big city individualizes him, giving him a unique position among his colleagues, which is also foreign to his intentions.

Marius Cristea is an artist of projects, if we admit the existence of such a stylistic category. The way he works both with the parts and with the whole is his main identity attribute. The material side is happily intertwined with the conceptual one. In other words, each work, be it painting, drawing or object, sometimes all this in one place, has an aesthetic value in itself, participating at the same time in a truth more comprehensive than that of the laws of internal composition, the result of which is. A major feature of it is that in installations he approaches the object with pictorial means, and in painting he attacks the figurative by abstract means.

For Relu Biţulescu’s artistic work, there is no established specialized terminology in Romania and in the world. This fact defines the unique character of his artworks, always composite, unconventional, experimental, which can be interpreted as assemblies, painted objects, or even installations.
After a period of creation that we could call “Stairway to Heaven”, after the name of the exhibition from 2011 and the catalog edited on that occasion, he started in 2015 working for another exhibition project, entitled “Between the Worlds”.

One of those exhibitions that the viewer will certainly not forget for the rest of his life is Tronicart 1300, by Gheorghe Ilea, organized by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest and Plan B Gallery (Cluj-Napoca) at Sala Dalles (Bucharest), during March – April 2012.

Tara is a character in the Romanian visual arts who can be annoying and often does. Unlike other artist-characters, von Neudorf is not the hero of scandals created for the sake of scandal and has no favorite clients, nor is he the worst or most frustrated man on earth. He strikes with the same ease in the targets he chooses, without hatred or passion, according to algorithms he knows. Drawing a parallel with field tennis, we would compare him to Rod Laver, Pete Sampras or, closer to us, Roger Federer. Tara do not use slices, but his forehand hits hard and always gets the point.

The canvases offer many new things, given that everything is as we knew before. What is interesting in them are the atmosphere, the state and the story, i.e. the subjective factors that stand between nature and the way it was transposed on the medium, because we are dealing with an artist-storyteller. The works are stories of the end of autumn and winter, of the snow in a Transylvania outside of space and time, completely different from the one in Bram Stoker’s novel.

The distinctive mark of the project “The Story Collector”, signed by the ceramic artist Lucia Lobonţ is the strongly graphic side of the exhibits. Lucia Lobonţ focuses in her artistic work on the subject rather than on the three-dimensional object.

The road to making an artwork is as important as the final result for Alina Codin. This means that, before anything else, the artist does not use recipes or algorithms in her work, but also that between her life and her creation there is a total continuity.

The non-figurative, definitive and irreversible option of Florin Mocanu, otherwise an excellent illustrator, represents a perfect plea for color, and not the expression of an iconoclastic conception. The chromatic relations, the tuning, the rhythm, or the game of perception in relation to the complementary ones are just some of the visible landmarks of his artistic activity. But if we accept the metaphorical difference between looking and seeing, what really matters in Florin Mocanu’s work are reason and sensitivity.

PIAR (the acronym of Painting and History of Arts in Romania) is a Romanian art group founded in 2008 by Alexandra Pompiliu, Iulia Florea Lucan, Andrei Berindan, Andrei Ciubotaru, and Mihai Plămădeală (also the curator of the exhibitions and writer of this article). The three guests are Georgiana Bobocel (choreographer), Doina Stan (violin) and Gabriel Bălaşa (percussion), all of them Master of Arts in the moment of writing this article.

For Reka Csapo Dup, sculpture is a mode and at the same time a way to reconcile the seen with the unseen. As nothing emerges from nothing, at least since Creation, the Big Bang or any other event considered as zero point in time, we can take into account the truism that there will always be a before and an after.

A good connoisseur of techniques and materials, Sorin Purcaru, teacher at the University of Visual Arts and Design in Iaşi, Romania, concentrates his creative forces in the area of the figurative, a metamorphic figurative and not infrequently allegorical.

The tangible, practical elements, the clumps of Tiutin to say so, are part of the truth unrevealed yet, but readable through initiation. The artist reserves the privilege of saying that there is no universe without harmony and no meaningless act. Nothing happens by chance, everything is part of a plan and we all contribute to its development, even more than that, all (micro or macro) seems to be equally important in this system.

Sculpture is one of the most conservative and, at the same time, innovative arts. In 5,000 years, the questions and issues of sculpture have remained the same. On the other hand, new materials and technologies, such as the 3D printer, allow the volume of ideas that have been impossible to materialize in the past.

Through his work, Dan Vişovan is an atypical sculptor, in the sense that for what he does there are no classically accepted references. The artist focuses on closures and openings, the resulting visual forms being logical consequences of the binomial outside / inside.

One of the most surprising visual art projects in Romania in the last two decades is Cosmin Paulescu’s “Supra Super Subditus” solo show. It is a post-postmodern initiative of interpretation, respectively of re-evaluating the ideas of collective subconscious and automatic writing, painting & drawing.

Dragoş Pătraşcu’s instruments are not prepared in the sense of the ideas of Fluxus & George Maciunas, nor do they unfold in the manner of Georges Braque, but rather are touched by the spirit of Marcel Duchamp.

The architectural pseudo-drawing represents a special side of Vásárhelyi’s creation. From one project to another, an entire gallery of ancient, renaissance or baroque quotations has as its selective and at the same time constitutive reason the logical interweaving with modern architecture, in a wide, otherwise postmodern discourse.

The title of the article is inspired by the names of two events in the ceramics area, held at about the same time in Bucharest and Seattle. The artists, who are both Romanian, have in common, apart from the material in which they express themselves, the appetite for the cultural shock, covered conceptually by what they achieve, each with distinct means.

rofessor at the National University of Arts, Ioan Atanasiu Delamare was one of the most important Romanian graphic designers, continuator of an unique graphical style, inherited from his teachers, Octav Grigorescu and Vasile Kazar. Another former student of Vasile Kazar, 1963 graduate of the Institute “Nicolae Grigorescu” is Mircia Dumitrescu, academician, doctor honoris causa and professor since 1990 at the same prestigious institution, which became meanwhile the National University of Arts.

The hills proposed by Elisabeth Ochsenfeld are both abstract, gestural and decorative. The strong point of the project is that each of the three hypostases listed is an artistic result of the other two.

Valeriu Mladin is an international European visual artist, who lives and works in Romania. His talent, related to everything that can lay under the aegis of the term techne, cannot be questioned by any viewer, but the whole story of his creation begins right here.

According to the mythology of ancient Greece, the chimera is a fabulous animal improbably made up of plausible parts from many animals. Artistic representations of chimeras are a constant to this day. The artistic or commercial stake, however, is different, from creator to creator. The iconographic source can be a pretext for drawing or color, or it can play the main role, in a semiological context.

The theme of machine-men, developed by Iulia Lucan over three years, started from a series of initial drawings that vaguely suggested the relationship between the human body and various invented objects. The inner law of composition of the visual forms was the hazard.

After a relatively short expressionist period, partially overlapping with a surreal one, Marin Gherasim adopted from the beginning of the ’70s, the theme, style and manner to which he would be faithful to this day. The cycles of the Apse, of the Tower, of the Mountain, of the Column or of the Capital, all these constituted in categories, the corresponding works bearing even the respective names, meant more than a corpus of themes and a direction of development: they are identity landmarks.

The scene of Romanian visual arts was dominated in the interwar period (1918 – 1940) either by the modernist movements or the avant-garde, especially Dada, all in an attempt to recover, align and setup an original local school. Constantin Brancusi, considered to be the father of modern sculpture, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Iancu and Victor Brauner are just a few of the interwar exemplary artists.

The way in which Marian Zidaru avoids tautology is related to an intuitive thinking system and at the same time to a special sense of measure. The artist invents structures, mostly composites, always starting from pre-existing forms, in principle loaded with theological or traditional meanings.

A dialog with Roman Tolici is always a joy to the spirit comparable, if I may say, similar to the contemplation of his artworks. The coffee I had with him in an empty coffee shop on Hristo Botev Street, Bucharest, on a Saturday, got me thinking, of another situation I experienced sometime / somewhere in Montmartre, Paris. Together with Tolici, any place could feel like a cultural capital of the world (if there aren’t too many people around).

Travelers who will wander through Năieni, Buzău County, will surely be surprised to see near the village, a huge Saint George (and the dragon about to be pierced with a spear) of unparalleled size in the country and very possible nowhere else.

Professor at the National University of Arts, Ioan Atanasiu Delamare was one of the most important Romanian graphic designers, continuator of an unique graphical style, inherited from his teachers, Octav Grigorescu and Vasile Kazar.

Lucian Liciu seeks, experiments and risks. These would be the keywords of his entire creation. For this reason his artworks are heterogeneous, what unites them being more the spirit than the style or the manner. His morphological lexicon considerably exceeds the sphere of painting.

David Leonid Olteanu’s relationship with ceramics is biunivocal. On the one hand, he has reservations about the conditions imposed by the material and the technologies that lead to the final form of the artworks, on the other hand, he is attracted by experiments on the chemical composition of substances he uses, especially those related to combustion.

Maria Cioată starts in her artistic work from metaphor, leaving a generous place to the possible changes that can occur during the technological process and to the adaptation to the exhibition spaces. Her works, most often modular, are approached as matrix, the components being arranged in interchangeable networks.