SHADES OF WHITE
April 17 - May 14, 2013
Exhibitors: Adela Bonaț, Cristina Bolborea, Andreea Brăescu, Mana Bucur, Vasile Cercel, Gherghina Costea, Georgiana Cozma, Daniela Făiniș, Ovidiu Ionescu, Marta Jakobovits, Gabriela Simona Kolozsi, Lucia Lobonț, Maria Cara Olteanu, David Olteanu, David Leonid Olteanu, Imola Jakabos Olsefszky, Monica Pădureț, Cristina Popescu Russu, Oriana Pelladi, George Tiutin, Titu Toncian, Iulian Vîrtopeanu, Ioana Șetran.
Curators: Gherghina Costea & Vasile Cercel Held together in this display, the exhibiting artists’ ceramic works look so different as far as their artistic language and stylistic options are concerned but they offer the refined valences the porcelain and the stoneware are able to express. The common element linking these works is the whiteness of the vitrified ceramic mass, a symbolic colour able to shine due to its shadows. Chromatic symbolism has evolved and diversified along history, the white colour occupying an important place in the hierarchy of meanings: light, purity, virtue, peace, harmony, honesty. A Yang symbol, both diurnal and masculine, the white and the subtle energy of its luminosity act involuntarily upon and impact the human psychic and thinking.
Vasile Cercel, ceramist, April 2013 |
The Porcelain's Valences
“White’s Shadows” sums up Gherghina Costea and Vasile Cercel’s curatorial effort.The most adequate material for exploring the “ceramic white” is the porcelain, with technical qualities well exploited by the 23 exhibiting artists. Approached with sensibility, the porcelain becomes empathetic with the artist, being able to convey the beholder ceramist’s creative energy: the delicate and fragile organic shapes admired in the works of Gherghina Costea, Cristina Popescu Russu and Ioana Şetran. The docile porcelain easily changes its condition from that of a receiver to that of an emitter, engaging the creator into a manipulating labour, where artist’s personality subdues to the material. But each ceramic artist discovers the material through symbiosis/dialogue or, on the contrary, through an assiduous process. In Gherghina Costea’s works, porcelain docility reveals the inner freedom of the sap pulsating in plants. Capturing sap’s fluidity, the ceramist turns it into a pulsating line able to radiograph the organic tissue. The artist investigates the white from inside and surprises its regenerating possibilities, that is, the pulse of the spiritual life, the eternal white (the way this ceramist states). “A spiritual life means to step on the snow without leaving footprints.” (Pr. Marcu Manolis) Differently dynamized oriental structures reveal the inner configuration to a similar receptor – I am mainly referring here especially at Vasile Cercel’s ceramic installations. Out of the series of works following an oriental spirit I quote the pieces made by George Tiutin, Titu Toncian, Marta Jakobovits, Mana Bucur and Lucia Lobonţ. The relationship between bi- and three dimensionality is subtly suggested in Cristina Popescu Russu’s works. The concentrated shape, the delicacy and the poetic line define artist’s kaikus. The transition light-shade is idio-rhythmically achieved by Georgiana Cozma in her sound formulae rendered by suspended porcelain sheets. The binomial surface–relief points out the Cristina Bolborea’s story about certain melancholic Portuguese landscapes. The owl, rendering Monika Pădureţ’ state of mind,becomes a brand in her bas-reliefs. Andreea Brăescu creates graphisms reminding the lapidary compositions achieved by the Catalan Juan Miró. The figurative unity of the sculptural ronde-bosse defines Simona Kolozsi’s work. An abstract symphony of movement appears in David Leonid Olteanu’s composition. The rhythmic structure of the module – both one and multiple – is underlined by Mariana-Cara and David Olteanu’s works. Small tension-flexion curbs render the poetry of movement in Imola Jakabos’ works. Porcelain’s technical valences are explored in the monolith-like structure with diorite intrusions – and here I am referring to the transparent glazes breaking the ensemble unity in Ovidiu Ionescu’s work. Expressionist accents outline Daniela Făiniş’portraits. Fragment aesthetics defines Oriana Pelladi’s torso. We meet a futurist synthesis (I am not referring precisely to Nude Descending a Staircase, but to an extrapolation of the movement concept) in the work signed by Adela Bonaţ. A sign of urban humour is to of Iulian Vîrtopeanu, who surprises his characters in philosophic sentences. Raluca Băloiu, critic |
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A short movie courtesy of SENSO TV - directed by Bogdana Contraş