No.3 / May 2019
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article partially published on Tribuna magazine, no.391/2018.
Through the project “Once Upon a Time in Romania”, materialized for the time being in a first exhibition organized in September 2018 at the Visual Arts Center in Bucharest, 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. This exhibition is the most appropriate way to meet Liciu’s universe of artistic thought, revealing a genuine creator of images and at the same time a refined interpreter of truths beyond appearances.
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.
Lucian 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.
We should not be surprised if the sheep he draws on cardboard and cuts, are fastened with screws, left out in plain sight, on fields painted in oil or acrylic on wooden panels. Continuing, the bridge from Cernavodă also has numerous nuts, while the subway and the tank in his picto-collages are made of galvanized sheet metal. In some realistic landscapes, impeccable from a technical point of view, characters from cartoons, movies or adult magazines are pasted. The interventions on the paintings or drawings represent a constant of the artistic work undertaken by Liciu, these being operated with and through elements totally distinct from those in his artworks. The playful component is well outlined.
The titles have their importance in the general discourse, defining the artist’s position in relation to those represented. Among these, I mention: “Babele (God, What Could Nature Do!)”, a work depicting the famous monument of nature in the Bucegi Mountains; “A Bus Called Desire”, a large collective portrait of passengers crammed into a means of public transport; and “The Five-and-a-Half-Year Five-Year Plan,” a post-industrial landscape – a ruined factory.
Without any claim to completeness, the exhibition has captured the spirit of an important of Romania in the last three decades. I point out that Liciu does not choose only pessimistic, negative or ironic themes. The moment of December 21, 1989 and the protests within the anti-corruption movement in 2018 were also captured, in the same daily note as the memorable football match between Romania and Argentina, from the 1994 World Cup. The city center, the traditional village or the most important buildings of the country have so far found their rightful place in “Lucian’s Sistine.” The folk dancers from the years of communism or the current singers of manele were also subjects. In other words, Romania with good and bad.
The project, started in 2012, is in full swing and involves a suite of at least two other exhibitions. The one I briefly commented on, however, could only accommodate forty of the more than one hundred artworks completed so far.
An iconic image of Lucian Liciu’s exhibition is “Hamburger Eaters”. In a painting of epic dimensions, three isocephalous male characters are represented around a table, in an almost heraldic position, at a feast in which, together with the protagonists, in the lower plane, a few pigeons and a crow participate. The background is a communist district, the clothes that these gentlemen are wearing come unequivocally from a second-hand store, and the stupid sadness on their faces does not seem to be alleviated even by the satisfying greed of consuming excessive caloric food. The key of the artwork are the burgers, which represent for many Romanians the most important change between the communist regime and the original democracy that followed.
In 2017, the artist had an exhibition based on a (pseudo)erotic theme, in which he formulated questions about being, through attraction, lust, licentiousness, sexuality and, finally, love. For 2019 he already has another project, that of life seen as a boxing match, where the idea of fighting prevails. Both, plus at least three more: “Maternity”, “Stamps” and “The Fair of Vanities”, have behind them thousands of studies or sketches and several hundred canvases. All this is in full swing. Lucian Liciu lives through and to draw or paint. Every time I visit him at his studio (actually his three studios; two in Bucharest and one outside the capital), sometimes at intervals of only a few days, I am surprised to see, for the first time, numerous new works. The most important thing is that, beyond the volume of work, from time to time there are notable changes in his visual discourse, at the morphological level, but also at the iconological one.
The moment when the artist will organize a large exhibition, I mean large in proportions, i.e. one that brings together the most important cycles and projects of his creation, will be extremely interesting. But I do not anticipate or give suggestions in this regard, because what interests me is reading images, not promoting an artist brand. For this important chapter we need a completely different professional qualification than the one I have, that of art historian and theorist, sometimes art critic, sometimes curator.
Also known as the “noble art”, boxing occupies the central role of the new exhibition proposed by Lucian Liciu. The title speculates the potential semantic differences of this expression, especially since the fights constituted in subjects of the artworks have nothing noble, possibly only in the way they were transposed in painting or drawing.
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. Most often clashes were placed in the context of boxing, but in some cases, the gloves were left for bats, blows were not only the permitted ones, and fights have become other manifestations of sport and not only, including that of fair play.
Humorously, the artist considers that as some faces ask for advice, others look punchable. In this respect and in the same line of subtlety and detachment, Liciu is concerned, at a subtext level, of the giving and receiving (punches). Fight is regarded as a form of knowledge, the hook, the left jab, right cross and the uppercut, like ontological privileges (all of which treated as epistemological categories), while suffered beating is regarded as a process of reception.
The ring, the cage, the street or the greenfield, in other words the legal or illegal fight locations, symbolize the real world, dominated by asymmetric disputes. Beyond the sincerity and the iconic status of the images, I remark two important aspects: the first is the isocephalism, and the second the fact that there are no differences of attitude between the expressions of the losers and the winners. Six of one and half a dozen of the other; the now defeated may be as good a winner next time. Those who have accepted the fight have already lost.
However, the message is not a pessimistic one. The viewer (to the artworks) will adopt the neutral position of the spectator (from sport or combats), avoiding identification with combatants. Fights are presented in their absurdity and lack of meaning. I remind you that not the contact sports, the lesser the noble art, are criticized and parodied. On the contrary, they are treated with respect, in an abstract way, as long as everything happens according to the rules of common sense.
I conclude by bringing back into discussion the activity of Lucian Liciu, transposed into works, projects and exhibitions. Here are the relevant things; the rest is just details.
Although the forms live visually by themselves, the iconological dimension still prevails. The female torso, for example, I’m referring to the project Ia, from 2017, is seen at the same time as a traditional piece of clothing, a dogmatic egg and a sleeping muse. The message transmitted revolves around the breath, the life, the soul, in fact the pneuma, not the cultural quote. The idea of the divine spirit that animates the world is found in the entire creation of the artist.
