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. The fact that he cannot fully control what happens during the final stages of his work makes him constantly looking, but also to insist on the modelling stage. The quest is equivalent to the risk of colour changes, deformations, even physical degradation of the parts, all due to the use of intuitive chemistry. The meticulousness combined with the joy of working often results in the imprinting of the created pieces.
However, it is not the experiment that occupies the main place in his creation, nor the craftsmanship, but the ideas, more precisely the shapes taken by the morphological ideas underlying his projects. For this reason, David is an atypical ceramic artist. Basically, there is no situation of not reaching well to what he proposed himself, in terms of ceramics, but the so-called standard roads do not seem to address him, so he uses them only if he subordinates them to ideas outside of ceramics, for example to get the shapes it needs as such, to build something further.
It is interesting how the elements related to a certain logic remain inscribed in it, regardless of the degree of autonomy or derivation of some of them. The arrangement on levels, from another point of view on eons, represents a distinctive mark of the artist. It should be noted that the algorithm is always performed consciously, but each time activated by empirical motivations. In other words, the process behind creation is not a scholarly, precious, sought after or calculated one. Instead, various readings or personal revelations become generators of subjects, in versions adapted to the daily experiences that determined them.
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic
