No. 28 / May 2020
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article published in Observator Cultural magazine, no. 468 / 2009
Galeria Posibilă organized in the spring of 2009 the solo exhibition of the artist Ştefan Câlţia, entitled “Winter”. The works had been carried out between November and February 2008 – 2009, but Ştefan Câlţia’s winter was not a temporary one, but a state known and explored since childhood, in which the smell of ripe apples and the crackling of wood in the stove did not dissipate. His canvases kept and keep echoes of the experiences lived throughout his life, but what speaks of all this are the shapes and colors, not the subjects. That exhibition is distinguished from the previous ones by the paradoxical cultivation of the novelty that the repetition can accept, without constituting itself in something totally new. It is actually a winter of several winters.
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 deep relationship with nature is a basic characteristic not only of Ştefan Câlţia’s artistic work but also of his life – Matei Câlţia, son of the artist and curator of the gallery, told me. Biology, as a subject, often saved Stefan from mathematics or Latin during his school years. The observation of nature was pushed by him further, towards a visual sign, through which he can recreate a world, that of the spectator. Ştefan Câlţia is not used to working outdoors or after photos or sketches, preferring the intimacy of the workshop and his thoughts. There are events that, without being part of the artworks themselves, underlie them. Two years ago, for example, the artist went to collect mistletoe somewhere in the country. That’s when a character appeared in this exhibition, The Mistletoe Traveler.”
Continuing the discussion with Matei Câlţia, we also touched on the issue of galleries in the context of the current economic coordinates. “The global financial situation is an interesting exercise for Romanians, who, after finally finding supermarkets, begin to experience temperance. The crisis, which (no one) wanted, could be a very good chance for us to (re) become temperate, to reflect on ourselves and on what really matters in life, depending on what we want to be. Our target audience is mainly from Romania. As a gallery we are affected by the financial problems we are talking about, but in a somewhat positive way, because the world is starting to be more attentive to what they are buying and to be more interested in buying something of value, so that, in other words, they have a convertible value. That means a responsible collector, not just a person who buys to fill some walls or to set a space.”
At the end of last year, Galeria Posibilă organized Ion Dumitriu’s and Dan Perjovschi’s solo exhibitions – with the latter continuing in the coming months, in Cluj and Oradea. In March, at the invitation of Liviana Dan, two exhibitions took place in Sibiu, at the Gallery of Contemporary Art of the Brukenthal Museum: one with works by Ion Dumitriu and the other with works selected from three exhibitions by Nicu Ilfoveanu. Both artists had previously been exhibited by the Bucharest gallery. The next event that Galeria Posibilă will organize will be the release of the “Drawings from Herina” catalog, in April, about a year after the opening of the exhibition in Bistriţa County, about which I wrote extensively on another occasion.
Returning, the relationship with the story is essential in Ştefan Câlţia’s painting. The artist uses two means: one of the fantastic and one of the seemingly realistic narrative. The narrative is of the visual sign, not of reality. This is especially noticeable in landscapes. Trees are not replicas from nature but a praise of construction and geometry. The space proposed by the artist is familiar, but also mysterious. The stable balance of lines and shapes can be disturbed at any time by something from outside. This something is not negative, just unknown. The whole perspective can change, what appears as static being only a stage of transition to entirely something else. Following the course of this idea, in the winter of Ştefan Câlţia the signs of spring can be clearly distinguished.