No. 32 / July 2020
Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article published in Tribuna magazine, no. 379 / 2018
Marius Cristea is an artist of projects, if we admit the existence of such a stylistic category. The way he works both with the parts and with the whole is his main identity attribute. The material side is happily intertwined with the conceptual one. In other words, each work, be it painting, drawing or object, sometimes all this in one place, has an aesthetic value in itself, participating at the same time in a truth more comprehensive than that of the laws of internal composition, the result of which is. A major feature of it is that in installations he approaches the object with pictorial means, and in painting he attacks the figurative by abstract means.
The artist designs his exhibition plans long before the start of the work sessions, and the solo exhibitions are scheduled in the calendar at the right time. It’s about the grace period behind his projects. Morphological steps are followed without looking for shortcuts. The material dimension fully plays its trumps. Support, pigment or chassis; all of this goes through the sine qua non filter of the type of image it operates with. Dimensions also have their importance. In his exhibition in 2018, at the Romanian Academy, he presented, among others, two canvases of twelve and eight meters, respectively, for which he created a special exhibition scenography.
Another major aspect in Marius Cristea’s creation is intermediality. The painter naturally appeals to the ready-made object, to the cultural, historical or social quotation and adapts to the available spaces. As spectators, we can validate what we see in the field of works, but we can also enjoy the atmosphere created as a result of spatial relationships. The volume and the neighborhoods take an active part in the game of exhibitions signed by Marius, each developed individually, but all located on the same stylistic axis.
It is worth appreciating that the painter largely evades the manner, his searches aiming rather at the concept. This approach leads to the extension, continuation, transposition, collaboration or association with ideas or artists from outside and even invites the activation of the mentioned options. The visual horizon is thus expanded, without any of the parties suffering. On the contrary, the discourse remains unitary, despite its diversity. The chosen themes allow by the way of their development the derivation, the permutation and the annotation. Thus, multiple reading possibilities naturally appear, which fully cover the area between morphological and conceptual.
The Sign of Life project includes motifs approached by the artist during a decade of experiments, searches, but also accomplishments. Beyond pure expression through color and visual sign, iconography occupies an important place in the economy of the series of artworks. Figurative, decorative and at the same time abstract, Marius Cristea marks through the established iconological milestones a corridor between Gnosticism and Agnosticism, whose directional vector is readable in both directions. Its symbolism, consecrated or invented, belongs to the sphere of archetype and reason. Whether it is the signature, as an affirmation of identity, of the text, treated as a graphic system carrying meanings, possibly esoteric and at the same time with a decorative function, or the unstable balance established between anima and animus, a binomial seen through floral plant filter, it can be said that what resulted through artistic will and order is full of life, from an artistic point of view, but also of the idea.
