Lucian Liciu does not claim to reveal, do not condemn and do not make fun of. Simply, the artist lives and works in the south-eastern part of Europe for half a century, during which he observed what happened around him at a social, political or cultural level. His critique takes on benign forms, without moralizing connotations.
The depicted scenes, borrowed from everyday life, are rather pretexts for the multiple and diverse visual ideas he has than the subjects themselves. In other words, the story behind each work, because each work has its own story, fulfills only the function of a catalyst, without imposing itself in a purpose. What really matters is the relationship between the images depicted and the technical choices with which the artist tackles and at the same time captures the general from the particular of the approached themes. Once completed, the works present the transfigured reality, or, in any case, transposed into a personal system of signs.
Beyond the refinement of the execution, the definition of the space through concise visual landmarks becomes a stake of the ensembles made by the artist. She constantly seeks to vectorially extend the physical boundaries beyond the actual art pieces and to direct them to the area of imagination or verbalization, taking into account the iconographic sources, often legible or stated by titles. The context of the projects is implicitly symbolic. The decorative is also part of the visual discourse, the meticulous realization of the individual works being able to reach the preciousness, without this interfering with the transmitted message however.
Liciu seeks, experiments and risks. These would be the keywords of his entire creation. For the reason stated above, his artworks, respectively the series of 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, therefore in his personal exhibitions, for example in the one to which I refer expressly, paintings, collages, ready-made, various and ingenious objects, sometimes picto-objects and so on are reunited. From the morning coffee, moment of ideas and plans, to the preliminary sketches and the actual work, Liciu simply invents solutions, procedures, techniques. I also note his courage; where most of the artists give up, he continues and does so with an overflowing confidence.
The artist sees life as a struggle between good and evil, between present and past, between oppressors and oppressed, between honest people and thieves; a struggle with one’s own limits or with others limits, with inertia, vices, stupidity, conformism or law. A fight for survival, for ideas, for achieving certain goals or simply for the sake of fighting.
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic