New Genres: artist

"[un]fold" by artist Ana-Maria Gălețeanu at Galeria INSPIRATIO

February 28, 2025 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Galeria INSPIRATIO presents, starting February 28, 2025, the first personal exhibition of the artist Ana-Maria Gălețeanu. Entitled "[un]fold", the exhibition addresses how identity is constructed through everyday gestures, analyzing the development of personality through the artist's actions and reflections.

"Anchor for the future"

The works in the exhibition were created in 2024, being inspired by the observation, introspection and experiences lived by the artist during the period referred to. "The works capture a continuous dialogue between spontaneity and reflection, visible in the visual rhythms and contrasts between fluidity and precision. The personal symbols integrated in the creations offer clues about the concerns and passions that define the artist Ana-Maria Gălețeanu.

Through sequences of lines, points and vibrant touches, the artist creates visual rhythms that convey movement and energy. She predominantly uses watercolor, a technique that allows colors to merge and evolve organically, and interventions with colored pencils add accents of precision and control. Although at first glance the compositions may seem playful, beyond their surface you can see strong emotions and deep reflections" - explains Alexandra Ilnițchi-Ardelean, curator of the exhibition.

"The strength of fragility"

Ana-Maria describes her creative process as follows: "I painted the simple joys that, for a moment, suspended time, those moments that made me notice them, admire them and transform them into defining experiences."

About the artist

Ana-Maria (b. 1990) is a visual artist and illustrator, a graduate of the Mural Art section of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Bucharest. Her artistic activity combines original creations, book illustration and coordination of creative workshops. With a deep dedication to education and community, Ana-Maria leverages her talent to inspire and promote art as a means of expression and personal development.

"Exuberance"

Since 2018, Ana-Maria has settled in Brașov, a city that has become the center of her artistic activity. Her works were exhibited at the Blue Biennale, as well as in group exhibitions organized at the INSPIRATION Gallery, the Art Museum in Brașov and the Cotroceni National Museum.

The exhibition can be visited daily between February 28 and March 27, 2025, at the INSPIRATION Gallery, Brașov (Romania), Johannes Honterus Court no. 8, between 10:00-19:00, with free entry.

Info and photos provided by Alexandra Ilnițchi-Ardelean

art gallery

A whole month of modern and contemporary sculpture

February 25, 2024 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The Romanian Sculptors' Month is ongoing in Iași, Romania. It is a complex event in which several exhibitions take place in museums, galleries and the public space.

The event celebrates the personality of the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, but also sculpture and contemporary sculptors in general, following new forms of sculpture and art installations.

Photos by INFO Iași

This is the largest event dedicated to modern and contemporary sculpture in Romania, which has grown with each edition in the last 4 years.

Therefore, from February 19 to March 19, more than 350 sculptures are exhibited in 24 personal and collective exhibitions, and 48 works are displayed in public spaces, indoors and outdoors, in different locations of the city.

Representatives of modern sculpture such as Ion Jalea, Oscar Han, Dimitrie Paciurea (through the involvement of the Constanța Art Museum) Ion Irimescu (works from the "Ion Irimescu" Museum in Fălticeni) Marcel Guguianu, Corneliu Medrea, Mihai Olos, Peter Jecza, along with the Romanian contemporary artists such as Paul Neagu, Geta Brătescu, Aurel Vlad, Mircea Roman, Laurențiu Mogoșanu, Dumitru Verdianu, Horia Damian and Maxim Dumitraș are among the exhibitors.

The special guest in 2024 is the contemporary artist Mircea Cantor. After exhibiting in major museums of the world, Cantor can now be seen at the Palace of Culture in Iași, where the "Rope Column" is exhibited, a sculpture-installation, which takes up one of the motifs often found in Cantor's work - the rope, the one that leads to unity, balance and solidarity.

Photo by Cosmina M Oltean

The artist said that "the motif of the rope is reproduced on the wooden churches in Maramureş, but not only there, they are also found in Bihor. The symbol is a reference to unity, solidarity and consolidation of a community. You can find the rope, obviously, in other civilizations and cultures, starting with the Babylonians, the Egyptians, then the European cultures, and it speaks of something that binds, holds together. I took the motive and wanted to take it further."

For the first time at the Palace of Culture in Iasi are exhibited drawings by Brâncusi and a series of original photographs, taken by Edward Steichen in New York, all from the Mariana Florescu Collection. A unique portrait of Brâncusi, made by the surrealist Man Ray, can be found at the National Athenaeum in Iasi. Plus many other sculptures and installations...

artist

“Textile art with sculptural valences” by artist Zoe Vida Porumb

January 31, 2024 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

art gallery

Norbert Filep / "Chronicles from the Habitable Zone"

December 05, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Sector 1 Gallery presents the new solo exhibition of the artist Norbert Filep, entitled "Chronicles from the Habitable Zone".

The exhibition presents three new series of conceptual works by the artist, starting from phenomena, discoveries, measurements and observations in the field of astronomy. Through a personal de-click, the artist attempts a possible subjectivization of the scientific results that affirm, with immeasurable veracity, the existence of complex processes in the astronomical field. At the same time, the works incorporate the intrinsic curiosity of human nature, to discover and understand the vast dimension and plurivalence of the universe of which we are a part - we learn from the gallery.

“In short, it is about the subjectivization of objectivity”, clarifies the artist.

<<In recent years, Norbert Filep's practice has focused on using drawing to reflect on informational processes, in a hyper-digitalized era. Drawing once again becomes the main tool of the artist, who codifies scientific information in new artistic forms. In this case, he aims at the realm of astronomy, exo-planetary territory, extraterrestrial space becoming his playground.

Whether we're talking about spectroscopy or looking at the high-resolution pictures obtained by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, the mixture of the two types of information helps to establish objective features in the discovery of exoplanets. The technological processes used in obtaining and reading data extracted from the field of astronomy are used by the artist to generate his own visual language>> - Sector 1 Gallery statement.

<<The simple and direct character of the drawing as a medium coincides with the minimalistic and objective aspect of the data found in the tables that measure the light transit of the planets. They "draw" with their shadow abstract lines by which different characteristics are determined: size, chemical composition, mass and the time interval by which an orbital cycle ends, used by Norbert Filep as starting points for the works. Thus the paper transcends the support status and becomes part of the Cartesian system, the XY coordinate system for abstracting the information resulting from the measurements of the Kepler telescope, for example.

The same graphic is handled with the repetitive meticulousness of a watchmaker in the series of works “Spatial documents”, where through the excessive repetition of the transit drawing, spatial illusions of the transit phenomenon are created. Works such as Trappist-1e or Luyten B use the information attributed to the planets of the same name. The works represent the greatly reduced size of the planets constructed entirely of the figure describing the distance from Earth to them, located at various light-year distances from Earth.

Technological limitations in extra-planetary exploration generate information in an archaic form, which represents for Norbert Filep a subject for archiving in the form of a drawing, materialized in the form of an alteration of the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity. Thus, the objective information of astronomical research becomes a tool of artistic subjectivity, where the interpretations remain correlated with an open playing space and freed from the objective dimension of these types of information.>>

(Sector 1 Gallery)

Norbert Filep is a visual artist who works and lives in Cluj-Napoca. His conceptual practice uses drawing as a central mechanism to approach abstraction. Through accumulation and repetition, his works reconstruct, redefine and reflect on the various processes of information creation and structuring. He had solo exhibitions at MV Sci-Art, Timișoara, Mie Lefever Gallery, Ghent, Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, Matca Art Space and The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj-Napoca. His works can be found in the collections of the Bucharest National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bucharest Museum of Recent Art, the ING Art collection, the Transilvania Bank art collection, along with many other private collections around the world.

The exhibition is organized by Sector 1 Gallery.

Photos by University of Art and Design from Cluj-Napoca (UAD) & Sector 1 Gallery

art project

Painted stories in „THE OXYMORON: MY METAPHOR OF IMMERSING YOURSELF IN SOMETHING”

October 14, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Dessislava Deneva is a guest artist of the Blue Biennale 2023, taking place in Brașov between September 30 - October 21. For this event the artist proposes the project „THE OXYMORON: MY METAPHOR OF IMMERSING YOURSELF IN SOMETHING”, curated by Victoria Țăroi.

The opening of her exhibition took place in the preview of the Blue Biennale at Casa Muresenilor Museum Brasov.

Dessislava Denava, a Bulgarian painter, began studying art at the Beaux-Arts high school in Sofia, and then joined the National Academy of Arts in the Bulgarian capital, she specialized in mural painting.

„In her paintings, Dessislava treats almost organic matter. Of course, her training in mural painting has a lot to do with this. Her works seem to present a piece of a wall, a facade which is marked due to time. Dessislava Denava's works is present in several public and private institutions like Bulgaria, Argentina, Turkey, Belgium, U.S.A, Chili, Egypt, Hungary and Cyprus”, we learn from Artsper.

She was awarded at many art competitions for the best graphics and painting, and holds awards from national biennials and the Academic Mural Painting Award in Bulgaria.

Her art in her own words

This is what the artist conveys about her artistic approach:

<<I think, without being too literal, that through my work I would like to immerse myself in our time, a time of exponential development of the technical revolution. Interesting processes in artistic practices are also observed. The modern horizons of visual culture are based on dialogue and juxtaposition between divergent, often paradoxical at first glance, ideas, but ultimately united through a metaphorical language. The dynamics of modern times have also set the hectic rhythm of the author's reactions - seething, rift and transformations populate the works. We live in a perpetually changing and inconstant world woven of contradictions and untruths.

Photos by Blue Biennale

The point of view of believing in "absolute truth" (read reality) seems to be inapplicable today. New meanings are generated, based on the negation of reality and the views of the so-called "situational ethics" (A.T. Robinson). Our consciousness is constantly attacked by various sensory provocations, the situation is brought to the point of absurdity. It comes to a union of real antitheses, in the sense of a modern reflection of the world as a set of oxymorons, in the theoretical and practical field of visual arts. They are virtually directly related to modern media, without which our life is already unthinkable.

This initial paradox has provoked me to experiment, both in my ideas and in terms of their realization. I look for my truth, in situational, meaningful connections and juxtapositions, within the limits of a rich toolbox. I express my author's will, both in metaphorical figurative distinctiveness, and in the use of diverse materials such as: canvas, paper, plastic, oil and acrylic paints, pigments, pastels, etc. Here, congruence with reality is subject to my subjective observation and opinion. On the one hand, images from reality, on the other hand others, as if digitally decomposed images, are united in new, paradoxical artistic facts. Often, the figurative concepts used contain what by definition would be called oxymorons – they combine opposite ideas.

Household objects and human figures intertwine with abstract patterns, united in a single view oxymoron, as my overall creative concept. Semantic unity, is not so directly influenced by the materials themselves, but by the symbolic expression of my ideas. This multi-layered imagery and contrasting expressiveness are my reaction to the paradoxical times in which we live.>>

(Dessislava Denava)

art academy

Márta Jakobovits / "Blue Segment"

October 05, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

A new exhibition at the Art Museum in Brașov (RO) presents the creation of ceramic artist Márta Jakobovits in the exhibition "Blue Segment", included in the program of the Blue Biennale 2023.

Bianca-Maria Bălșan, manager of the museum, Victoria Ţaroi Galbenu, curator of the exhibition, Vladimir Bulat, art historian and president of the Artessentia Cultural Association, and university associate prof. Andrei Florian, spoke at the opening.

"Her artistic activity is a proof of the fact that ceramics is still a generous form of expressing the essence of things. The ceramic pieces of Márta Jakobovits represent a meditation and a spiritual dialogue with the natural world and with the human being itself. Her works are sections of her inner diary transposed into materials", we learn from sources within the museum.

Marta Jakobovits, a professional ceramist, graduated from the Academy for Visual Arts in Cluj and received her PhD in Liberal Arts from the University of Arts and Design in Budapest. She had been inducted into the Hungarian Academy of Arts, in Budapest in 2005, gives lectures and leads workshops about ceramics and paper-art at universities as invited artist.

The artist is a member of multiple professional organizations, such as Romanian Artists Union, the Barabas Miklos Guild, the Hungarian Artists Union, the Christian Artists Europe, Rotterdam, the European Academy of Culture and the Arts.

Her works are represented in the permanent collections of art museums in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and are part of private and public collections worldwide. She had been selected to represent the contemporary ceramic arts from Romania at the European Ceramic Context 2010 in Denmark and at the national exhibition “L`art céramique contemporaine roumaine”, 2010 in Paris. A retrospective exhibition, "Part of the Road Travelled", curated by Mălina Ionescu, was presented at the National Contemporay Art Museum in Bucharest (2021-2022). (https://www.jakobovits-marta.ro/)

The exhibition presented by the art museum is part of the INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE OF VISUAL ARTS, 3rd edition.

The theme of the edition is Oxymoron. "The oxymoron is a term taken from ancient Greek, a figure of speech that ensures the association of two incongruous, apparently incompatible terms, contradictory attributes, with surprising effects, in the same phrase, to supplement expression and character in the elaboration of powerful images. The oxymoron is a rhetorical figure through which we want to reflect together on the problems of the contemporary world, on the duality, tensions and diversity found in the complex reality in which we live or in the very kaleidoscopic nature of the human being, with eternal dilemmas and permanent confrontations in the struggle between life and death." (https://bluebiennale.com/web/)

Photo credits - Silviu Preda

aparte gallery

Oana Maria Nae, “THE STORY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN”

August 17, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Galeria Aparte (UNAGE Iași, Romania) presented the project "The story that could have been" (August 10-16, 2023), which included works signed by Oana Maria Nae, Ioana Păvăleanu (doctor) and Horia Ioachim Nae. In the current project, Oana Maria Nae is an artist-curator, responsible for both the exhibition concept and the artistic content and process. The exhibition is the story of a personal journey, from which the artist-curator extracted and then combined the practical and theoretical aspects of her own story and interaction with art over the years.

"Started as an intimate approach, an opportunity to reminisce and reactivate a personal creative process, the present exhibition becomes a support for the idea of the potentiality of an artistic career that did not happen", we learn from the curator. Oana Maria Nae is currently an art historian focusing on the area of modern art theory and modern design. However, several years ago she had a training in the field of visual arts, working with various artistic concepts and techniques. The exhibition consists of a fragmentary collage made of sketches, texts, works with various themes that Oana Maria Nae made from primary school to the period of her MA studies (approx. between 1990-2008). "Added to these are active and current process of self-analysis based on the temporal distance from that period. The period between the possible beginning of an artistic career and the present dominated by other concerns, professional or domestic, becomes a time in which the ability and freedom to choose, submission to choices and their acceptance, subtly transforms into a mechanism of regulation and understanding of the balance between reality and potentiality", Oana Maria Nae also conveys.

An obvious feminist reading of this artistic act is brought by the roles that Oana Maria Nae assumes and exhibits on this background. As a real echo of these ideas, several artworks made by Ioana Păvăleanu, a doctor, and Horia Ioachim Nae are brought to the exhibition, works that outline other creative potentialities, one of an amateur and the other of a child in training, which can be extinguished or, on the contrary, may increase or continue to exist.

"<<The story that could have been>> is an self-analysis exhibition of the creative process in its temporal evolution, signed by Oana Maria Nae, art historian, with an undeniable talent, enhanced by years of professional academic education. She could have been a visual artist - her cultivated talent fully recommends her, but her analytical spirit and pedagogic vocation opened other doors for her and it was not to be. The parable of the choices we make that shape or at least influence our professional destiny is obvious. But the humor, the self-irony, the appetite for mixed media and the collaborative text-image message are also remarkable. I also appreciated a nice nod to the passing of the years, with two guest artists - a transgenerational collaboration with Horia Ioachim Nae (in training) and a tribute to a friend in art, Ioana Păvăleanu, who finally chose medicine as a profession” - Cristina Simion, gallerist and curator at Tiny Griffon Gallery Nürnberg.

Oana Maria Nicuță Nae teaches modern and contemporary art courses at “George Enescu” National University of Art in Iasi. She is interested in the representation of women in modern Romanian painting, but also in the relationship between Orientalism and Westernism in modern art. She experienced the process of artistic creation for several years, especially the techniques of decorative art, being a graduate of the Mural Art specialization (2006) and participating in various exhibitions and collective artistic projects (2002-2008). She also created two mural art projects in Iasi (2002, 2006) and graphically illustrated the book "A super, mega, extra journey in the world of sleep" (ed. Sedcom Libris, 2022).

art gallery

Ștefania Crișan: The performance "Reverse the Entropy"

August 02, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Sector 1 Gallery presented the performance "Reverse the Entropy" by artist Ștefania Crișan. The took place on Saturday, July 29th, at Băiculești 29, Bucharest.

<<"Reverse the Entropy" is a profound exploration, deeply intertwined with the video installation "Geamăna" currently showcased in the gallery, part of the group exhibition Mother's Nature. The genesis of this performance dates back to 2017 when Ștefania Crișan first encountered the haunting landscape of Geamăna, a Romanian village submerged under toxic waters from a settling lake. During the late 1970s, Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime sacrificed this village, nestled at the foothills of the Western Carpathian Mountains, to exploit the copper mines of Roșia Poieni, forcibly displacing 365 families. Tragically, the mining activities in the gutted mountains of Roșia Poieni continue to cause an ongoing ecological disaster, spreading over 130 hectares, with nearly 27 million tons of waste deposited in the lake annually.

Photos by Sector 1 Gallery

Crișan's response to this poignant history involved collecting images, objects, and testimonies from the site. Through her profound sensitivity and understanding, she has masterfully translated these elements into performances, installations, sculptures, and intuitive chantings>>, the gallery informs.

Following the performance, there was an artist talk, where Ștefania shared her insights and inspirations behind "Reverse the Entropy", her creative process, and deeper meanings behind her work. The talk was moderated by Cristina Bută.

Ștefania Crișan (b. 1993, Romania) is interested in themes connected to the Anthropocene, questioning the paradoxes between the horror and the beauty of catastrophe, between observing the impossible inversion of the entropy and the healing virtues of ritual practices; between the death of a landscape and the death of painting. She is the winner of the 2022 Luxembourg Encouragement for Artists Prize (LEAP) and has exhibited at FRAC Lorraine, Casino Luxembourg, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken and Centre Pompidou-Metz. She lives and works in Metz, France.

"On the skin of the world there are clues. Colours that change afterwards. Asperities and strange alchemies. Tears and cuts, blisters and burns. Skin marked with a branding iron. Ștefania Crișan walks on this skin. Barefoot. She walks slowly, often stops, kneels down, lays her hands on the ground, approaches her mouth, presses her ear against it. She feels the vibrations, hears the rumblings, listens to the pulsations. She knows that she is walking on eggshells. That these eggs contain creatures that are already alive, not yet born, monstrous-looking because they haven’t yet reached their final appearance.

She walks on quicksand and knows that on the other side, the world below cries out in silence. Lying on her stomach, she becomes one with it, absorbs, receives the waves, and, motionless, samples fragments, collects them, deciphers them, translates them. She stays there for a long while. When she gets up, she remains silent. Then she sings." (Excerpt from Célia Charvet, CHUT.E. CHANT. SON. Ștefania Crișan against the skin of the world in LEAP – the Luxembourg Encouragement for Artists Prize catalogue, 2022)

“Geamăna” is a project of poetic activism comprising several works. In 2017, Ștefania Crișan discovered the existence of Geamăna, a Romanian village submerged under the toxic waters of a settling lake. In the late 1970s, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime sacrificed this village at the foot of the Western Carpathian Mountains in order to exploit the copper mines of Roșia Poieni, forcing 365 families to leave. Today, the mining of copper and other metals in the gutted mountains of Roșia Poieni is causing an ecological disaster that extends over more than 130 hectares, with nearly 27 million tons of waste deposited in the lake every year.

The only trace of the presence of the former village, the roof of the church, a symbol of the sacred, emerges from the water, which has turned orange due to the presence of cyanide. It acts as a ‘vestige of the future’ and a warning. Despite the tragic fate of their village, the local residents have never ceased to believe in God and in spirituality. Crișan collected images, objects and testimonies from the site and, through a sensitive understanding, translated them back into performances, installations, sculptures or intuitive chantings.

The performance "Reverse the Entropy", in dialogue with the video installation "Geamăna", was created after the artist’s first encounter with the landscape of Geamăna in 2017. At the time, she met two women living close to the contaminated lake. Despite their own sufferings, they offered her water, a place to sleep and their blessings. When the artist returned in 2018, she learned that one of the women had died. The performative sculpture Ophelia and the Anthropocene is a ‘portrait-receptacle’, a reflection on death, the disappearance and transformation of matter – in tribute to the deceased woman.

The performance is part of the exhibition Mother’s Nature, curated by Maya Økland and Cristina Bută. This project was financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Programme.

Performers: Ștefania Crișan & Victor Mopin

artist

"Mother's Nature" - exhibition & performances

July 14, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The opening of the exhibition “Mother's Nature”, curated by Maya Økland & Cristina Bută, took place on July 13th at Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, along with a performance by Monica Winther. “Mother's Nature” is a group exhibition which "tackles instances of the notion of mother in various contexts and art practices. From a personal to a post-anthropocentric dimension, the exhibition traces the potential meaning of the notion of mother in various contemporary art practices", we learn from the curatorial team. The exhibition is ongoing until August 28th.

Photo credits - Sector 1 Gallery

<<In Norwegian, the word føde means both food and give birth. Nature is commonly referred to as Mother Earth, as she is portrayed in almost every culture: to the Aztecs, Earth was called Tonantzin - "our mother"; to the Incas, Earth was called Pachamama - "mother earth", the word pacha in Quechua also signifying "space-time" or "universe". The Chinese Earth goddess Hou Tu is similar to Gaia, the Greek goddess personifying the Earth. In other words, mother is simultaneously the symbol of our entire existence, and the everyday woman we all must relate to whether we like her, or not. She can be a he, she, them or they, biological, cultural, or spiritual. Absent, present, good, and bad. We dream of her unconditional love just as much as we find it hard to resist the desire to control her. Honored and blamed, the multitude of ambivalence in her relations holds no limits. She can destroy us and nurture us, all at the same time.

In her writings, philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers calls Gaia/Earth a devastating power that shifts our categories of thought. Mother Nature is not the constant giver promising us nourishment, or, in a paradoxical fashion, the land of resources our capitalist societies continue to exploit. The title of the exhibition references both Mother Nature beyond her romanticized personification, as well as the relations and non-relations that we have with our mothers and other maternal figures and constructs. Within a society that is still prejudist towards gender, race and sexuality, in which certain stories and histories are or remain silenced, ecologies of care appear. How do we negotiate the relationship between care and emancipation? How do we grow with the other? From queer and feminist perspectives, the artworks and performances of Norwegian and Romanian artists Cristina David, Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Monica Winther and Ștefania Crișan trace existential affection, power, anxiety and love while calling upon Mother.>> - excerpt from the curatorial text.

The exhibition program includes three performances throughout the month of July:

• July 13, Monica Winther - „Paction drawing"

• July 22, Kiyoshi Yamamoto - „It Takes No Compromise to Give People Their Rights"

• July 28, Ștefania Crișan - „Reverse the Entropy”

Project support

The project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program, having VISP – Produksjonsenhet for visuell kunst as project partner.

The EEA Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway towards a green, competitive and inclusive Europe. There are two overall objectives: reduction of economic and social disparities in Europe, and to strengthen bilateral relations between the donor countries and 15 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics.

RO-CULTURE is implemented in Romania by the Ministry of Culture through the Project Management Unit. The Programme aims at strengthening social and economic development through cultural cooperation, cultural entrepreneurship and cultural heritage management. (www.ro-cultura.ro)

art gallery

Solo show / Martyna Benedyka: "The Sublime"

June 28, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The exhibition "The sublime" by artist Martyna Benedyka is on display at "Dan Hatmanu" Gallery, in the Central Hall Passage in Iasi, Romania. The art project is ongoing between June 27 - July 18.

The artist and the curator reveal us the aspects related to the concept and the philosophy behind this new art project.

“The concept of the sublime in philosophical aesthetics and art history is mainly understood as the quality of greatness. Edmund Burke, an Irish-born philosopher, claimed that the sublime is the most powerful experience. He also argued that sublimity and beauty were mutually exclusive. Burke presented his theory that beautiful objects are small and delicate, while sublime ones are dark and terrifying. Fascinated by this concept, I have chosen a series of different-sized paintings which touch on themes of monumentality as an aura of greatness, and little beauties in our lives that are inseparable from their fragility. One of the sources of sublimity is infinity”, we learn from the artist.

Caryatid, 2023
oil on canvas
&
Queen, 2023
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka

“Exploring the infinite, we experience a deeper, often unforgettable, sense of wonder. Here, the infinity is realized through cropped compositions, blackness, repetition, and the potential to evoke a mixture of emotions and feelings in the viewer. According to Burke, beauty brings relaxation and sublimity brings tension. The paradox of the sublime arises when we find peace in the things that overwhelm us. Both captivate us, despite the dangers. I decided to express the sublime and the infinite, referring to the sense and power of the image in the real world. Depriving it of details, a rather enigmatic selection of paintings evoke notions of the sublime as an aesthetic experience and a monumental vision that strikes the viewer with power and raises the boundless question of whether the sublime in art can coexist with beauty”, adds Martyna.

Ceramic Mushroom, 2022
oil on linen
Image: Martyna Benedyka

“The personal exhibition The sublime problematizes the coexistence of the concepts of sublime and beautiful, in the form of a visual experience whose latent tensions are generated by the paradoxical relationship between these two notions. Martyna draw a minimalist, ascetic (mono-/dia-) dialogue between stylized forms that undermines, as an act of rebellion, the limits of the exhibition space by placing the works either on the periphery of the gallery walls, or in one of its corners, or on plinths that assigns them an object - facility character. The artist's works betray fragments of faces and buildings that create a unity of stylistic and chromatic invoice”, sais Ioana Palamar, curator of the exhibition.

>> About the artist

Martyna Benedyka is a visual and sound artist, photographer and coloratura soprano. Working in a wide range of media including painting, film and digital photography, collage, installation, video and sound art, she focuses on human existence, voice and identity, nature and the clandestine life of objects.

She studied Art and Design at the Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, UK and graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting in 2014. She has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Estonia, Switzerland, South Korea, Canada and the USA.

Her work has been chosen by the Federation of British Artists for the Futures - UK’s largest annual survey of emerging contemporary figurative art at the Mall Galleries, London, among others. Recent projects include: Photo Romania Festival (winner 2022), Classix Festival (winner 2022), DongGang Photo Festival, South Korea (winner 2022-23), or De Structura Project, Estonia (winner 2022-23).

She is a member of Futures Photography, Amsterdam, NL (winner 2022) and she specializes in early and classical music. More about this and other of her projects, here - https://martynabenedyka.com/

On the poster - Before The Mirror, 2021
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka

Peephole, 2023
oil on wood
Image: Martyna Benedyka

"[un]fold" by artist Ana-Maria Gălețeanu at Galeria INSPIRATIO

A whole month of modern and contemporary sculpture

“Textile art with sculptural valences” by artist Zoe Vida Porumb

Norbert Filep / "Chronicles from the Habitable Zone"

Painted stories in „THE OXYMORON: MY METAPHOR OF IMMERSING YOURSELF IN SOMETHING”

Márta Jakobovits / "Blue Segment"

Oana Maria Nae, “THE STORY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN”

Ștefania Crișan: The performance "Reverse the Entropy"

"Mother's Nature" - exhibition & performances

Solo show / Martyna Benedyka: "The Sublime"

Follow Us

Popular Topics

recent posts

Contact us

Blog Archive

Popular Posts

Like us on Facebook

Flickr Images