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Media partners: Modernism.ro, Revista Arta, Agenția de Carte, Intell News, Leviathan, ArtLine, Amos News, Propagarta, Empower Artists, Agerpres, Radio România Cultural, Coolt Neamț, Zile și Nopți
Galateea Contemporary Art Gallery presents "Face to Face," an exhibition signed George Dragomir Turia, who brings his works to Romanian art galleries after more than 20 years in Canada.
The opening will take place Wednesday, February 7, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. at the Galateea Contemporary Art Gallery, Calea Victoriei 132, Bucharest.
The Art critic Luiza Barcan will speak at the opening of the event.
The exhibit consists of a series of 17 sculptural porcelain and stoneware portraits created in Canada over a period of fifteen years. The pieces were selected so as to capture the artist's experience of displacement, including the ways in which he creatively integrated the eclecticism and experimentation that characterize North American art. In trying to find his place in the new world, the artist must constantly evaluate himself – face himself, as it were – but also his intellectual models, his preconceptions and the cultural predeterminations that often become, in the new context, untranslatable and therefore as many existential anxieties.
"Face to Face" captures Turia’s use of abstractization sculpturally and decoratively, both as stabilizing creative strategy and as a way to connect with the viewer, who is invited to find himself in this experience of confronting one's own self and otherness. The abstractization, along with the under and over-proportioning of the heads, refuse a simplistic association of the portraits with the notion of identity, while the closed, lifeless or absent eyes suggest an inward-turned gaze. The artist draws on, and adds chromatic accents and decorative details to, the white surface in order to capture the complex nature of human interiority, where the simple subjective emotion is interweaved with instances of symbolic thought. Titles such as “The Shadow of My Former Self”, “Prima Materia”, “Dual Nature”, or those assigned to child portraits such as “Human Nature”, “Wonder” or “Innocence” describe primary concepts, experiences that structure existence in general. Just like the artist who sculpts in clay, to face oneself and others as part of a continuous process of reflection is to reshape oneself. George Dragomir Turia's exhibition functions as a personal archive and at the same time as an invitation for the viewer to see himself, as if in a mirror, in the archetypal experiences and hypostases that define the journey of the self whether between emotional states or, for that matter, between worlds. Georgiana Cozma
George Dragomir Turia was born in Turia, Olt, and is a graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design, Ceramics-Glass-Metal department, with a specialization in Ceramic under Prof. Costel Badea (class of 1997). In 1995, he received the Assos Art Foundation Prize for Ceramics and, in 1999, the Costel Badea Scholarship of the Union of Plastic Artists of Romania. In 2010, he was granted the Nicăpetre Art Award in Toronto, Canada. He is a member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania since 1997, and a member of Visual Arts Ontario and the Ontario Society of Artists, Canada, since 2005. He exhibits in Romania, Canada and the United States of America, and his works are part of public and private collections.
Art critic: Luiza Barcan
Curator: Georgiana Cozma
The exihibition will be open until o3 march 2024
The opening will take place Wednesday, February 7, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. at the Galateea Contemporary Art Gallery, Calea Victoriei 132, Bucharest.
The Art critic Luiza Barcan will speak at the opening of the event.
The exhibit consists of a series of 17 sculptural porcelain and stoneware portraits created in Canada over a period of fifteen years. The pieces were selected so as to capture the artist's experience of displacement, including the ways in which he creatively integrated the eclecticism and experimentation that characterize North American art. In trying to find his place in the new world, the artist must constantly evaluate himself – face himself, as it were – but also his intellectual models, his preconceptions and the cultural predeterminations that often become, in the new context, untranslatable and therefore as many existential anxieties.
"Face to Face" captures Turia’s use of abstractization sculpturally and decoratively, both as stabilizing creative strategy and as a way to connect with the viewer, who is invited to find himself in this experience of confronting one's own self and otherness. The abstractization, along with the under and over-proportioning of the heads, refuse a simplistic association of the portraits with the notion of identity, while the closed, lifeless or absent eyes suggest an inward-turned gaze. The artist draws on, and adds chromatic accents and decorative details to, the white surface in order to capture the complex nature of human interiority, where the simple subjective emotion is interweaved with instances of symbolic thought. Titles such as “The Shadow of My Former Self”, “Prima Materia”, “Dual Nature”, or those assigned to child portraits such as “Human Nature”, “Wonder” or “Innocence” describe primary concepts, experiences that structure existence in general. Just like the artist who sculpts in clay, to face oneself and others as part of a continuous process of reflection is to reshape oneself. George Dragomir Turia's exhibition functions as a personal archive and at the same time as an invitation for the viewer to see himself, as if in a mirror, in the archetypal experiences and hypostases that define the journey of the self whether between emotional states or, for that matter, between worlds. Georgiana Cozma
George Dragomir Turia was born in Turia, Olt, and is a graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design, Ceramics-Glass-Metal department, with a specialization in Ceramic under Prof. Costel Badea (class of 1997). In 1995, he received the Assos Art Foundation Prize for Ceramics and, in 1999, the Costel Badea Scholarship of the Union of Plastic Artists of Romania. In 2010, he was granted the Nicăpetre Art Award in Toronto, Canada. He is a member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania since 1997, and a member of Visual Arts Ontario and the Ontario Society of Artists, Canada, since 2005. He exhibits in Romania, Canada and the United States of America, and his works are part of public and private collections.
Art critic: Luiza Barcan
Curator: Georgiana Cozma
The exihibition will be open until o3 march 2024
A IMAGE GALLERY OF EXHIBITED ARTWORKS
