No. 27 / May 2020
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article published in Observator Cultural magazine, no. 710 / 2014
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. Iconography plays the main role, the story of the transpositions of images in porcelain being a real collection. The collector, stated in the title, is in fact the artist herself, whose cultural experience has refined echoes in a diaphanous material, both strong and fragile.
I went to the gallery the day before the opening (from Galateea Gallery, Bucharest, in March, 2014), during the arrangement of the artworks, most of them parietal, to take the pulse of the exhibition and talk to the artist in a working context. Appearances suggest that this is a graphic exhibition, however, porcelain retains its utmost importance, without entering into any form of conflict with the allegorically petrified narratives in the noble material.
The majority of the pieces were burned at 1230 degrees, the inscription or chromatic techniques being entirely specific to the arts of fire, respectively made before the baking process in the oven, obtained and fixed by the controlled combustion regime. So we are not dealing with simple painted ceramic countertops, but with artifacts subordinated to the laws of internal composition. The artist used for ornamentation mostly ceramic salts and pigments, light and rarer glazes, copper wire or semi-transparent sheets burned at 150 degrees, in a special regime.
From a morphological point of view, the pieces exhibited at Galateea belong to three series: the so-called paintings, postcards and vessels. The latter, bowls or plates, are rather volumetric structures carrying images than objects of crockery. The iconographic sources that feed the subject are the Armenian medieval manuscript miniatures, the Far East ones and a collection of postcards from the interwar period. It is nothing more and nothing less than the correspondence carried by the artist’s grandmother in times long gone. In the case of the portrait, Lucia Lobonţ voluntarily approaches Amedeo Modigliani; otherwise, the narrative of transreligious origin is detached and then interpreted from the Proto-Byzantine ermines, and the playful one from the oriental miniature or from a possible imaginary of the Toulouse-Lautrec type. Whether the theme is religiously or playfully inspired, the artist treats the image in a benign, even humorous way. The general vision of life is a solar, optimistic one.
Mónika Pădureţ relies in her curatorial discourse on the artist’s narrative appetite, at the same time drawing attention to the fact that a porcelain story is something other than one in words, or even in ink, pencil, charcoal. “The joy of telling a story with the help of porcelain is not available to everyone,” says the curator. Lucia’s works are the pages of a storybook, known and unknown, from everywhere. A book that is shown to us more unconventional, unfolding in a classic ceramics exhibition.
Not a few artists anticipate their works through drawings, true masterpieces. The notebooks of sculptors, muralists or ceramic artists can impress anyone at any time. Several recent exhibitions, such as that of Simona Tănăsescu, from Mogoşoaia, with drawings made by a potter, or of the sculptor Liviu Russu, from a few years ago, from Germany, who will soon meet with the Romanian public, demonstrate, if still necessary, that the potential of the two-dimensional graphic sign is huge. Lucia Lobonţ sketches her drawings directly in porcelain paste, her compositions being born on the work table, without calculations or preliminary evaluations. This almost gestural spontaneity is beneficial twice: for the type of art adopted and for the idea of storytelling, par excellence oral. The freshness of the images, the thematic freedom, the non-canonical solutions, the licenses and the personal vision will incite the public.
I talk to Lucia Lobonţ, who tells me that what she said in visual language is really revealed in a world on the border between object and image. “The works you see in the exhibition in Galateea, says Lucia, are a continuation of some ideas that can be found in my recent exhibitions in Bistrita and Cluj. Although what I do comes from different areas, I still keep the same line. Beyond the religious theme, related to angels, to the deeds of the apostles, which interests me especially, I am extremely attracted to the eastern part of the world. I traveled a lot in the Orient, in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and I realized that the opulent, ornamental genre, with sumptuous decorations, suits me perfectly. That’s how I tell my stories. If you look closely at the works, you will see that they all have a humorous flavor. The exhibition is actually my story, made up of subjective feelings and observations.”
The artist’s international experience is largely determined by a contract of almost one year in Vietnam, followed by another two years in Bucharest, during which time she worked for the company United Potery in Saigon. Lucia Lobonţ made the prototypes, later reproduced by the factory technicians. To this professional chapter, can be added the international art symposium in China, from 2010.