Cristian Pentelescu

Monumental by vision and not necessarily by size, the works displayed by Cristian Pentelescu bring together abstract routes and recognisable shapes, shining surfaces and areas where the material was assaulted, defeated and stopped in its ascending tracks, broken or cut off shapes which beg for mental extensions and prolonged shapes closing on themselves, ephemeral separations or combinations difficult to argument and maintain, a world switching between the real and unreal, between concrete and metaphor, between the admiration recourse and known shapes and a highly filtered, even censored inventiveness.

The sculptor is drawn to moments of balance, of tranquillity, which he records in the aforementioned creative and selection process, and they are not in short supply; he is aware, as we are all aware, that sand bleeds out of the hourglass until it is extinct, but it only records and conveys the fact at hand, without being torn by the thought of irrecoverable time loss (actually, the shape may be reverse); the result is a harmonious and easy on the eye sculpture, suggestive and missing pathetic gestures, with an implicit moral conclusion, but without being prominent or obtrusive. The “Ball of Yarn” was ordered according to three visible and predictable routes. “The Ring” is a gift of hospitality. “The Couple” lingers unperturbed, “The Gate” is, of course, the long awaited opening, but the threshold is so high that it seems unpassable, and its curved shape unloads the weight on the side walls, decayed by time; in a different perspective, the compact volume narrow the passing, but do not suppress it; the third gate in this exhibition is displayed in marble – a sign that the motif represents a direction of ongoing searching and thoroughness – minimises and geometrises the gap one could step through, giving the perception that the artist is ever watchful, quantifying, observant, clarifying. I don’t think that sculpture features a more unsettling iconographic theme than the one called „Pietà” (the Virgin Mary holding her dead son in her lap), rendered in the biggest galleries of the world and in our imaginary museums in unique representations. In the case of Cristian Pentelescu and in the work displayed in this exhibition, the lifeless body of the son, with his face turned towards the dust has become part of the cosmic balance, while the ravishing pain of the mother has transformed, for each of us, in an arch protector. With a demureness unjustified by the achievements of his works – but belonging to the man and thus is all the rarer – Cristian Pentelescu constructs a plastic universe full of visual lures and coups, a world of tranquil thought and aspiration towards formal perfection, a universe where craft becomes art, and art – craft (tékhne), as it occurred long ago, as a marvel, in Hellas – Doina Pauleanu PhD, art critic and director of the Constanta Art Museum

Pentelescu's sculptures are much more loaded with inner energies and tensions. Looking at his sculptures as a whole, one gets the impression that they are under the sign of the vortex. One of the works even bears this name. Around the core of this composition gravitate, on circular trajectories, spindle-shaped forms carrying vital energies destined to fertilize its core, leaving the potential for the birth of a new efflorescence or a new form of life. The degree of essentiality of the composition's component elements leaves room for the power of generalization, that welcome plastic ambiguity. The principle of particle gravitation around the nucleus is mirrored in the macrocosmic events of planetary or galactic systems. The work we are referring to looks like an engagement ring of a cosmic goddess. Many of his sculptures seem to express a kind of confrontation of two complementary energies. The meandering dance of the vigorous bronze figures is more akin to an erotic ceremony brought to the level of the main performance. The struggle is one of opposites, in full swing. The male-female polarity is almost omnipresent, but without any tribute paid to anecdotal descriptivism, but only at the level of principle under the new, rather "gestalt" solution. The volumes speak through their own attitude and presence. Vigorous curves and counter-curves energetically relate to each other releasing healthy tensions to the plastic form. Only in the warm and calm volume of a "Materna" do we witness the luminous result of this ceremony. The fundamental motif underlying these mouldings is the spiral, one with underlined cosmic connotations. The polysemanticism of the form results precisely from this beautiful ambiguity of polar dosages, static-dynamic, matte-lustrous, geometric-amorphic, orchestrated with real joy and plastic sense and a warm sensitivity. Here, a special role is taken by the play of shades of patina well controlled and put at the service of expressing the idea mood. The shiny, edged, mirror-like spindles crawl upwards, intertwine, intertwine, tending to return to their original state in order to take up the series of dynamic cycles. They remind us of the swirling pattern of plasma megajets that shoot out of the solar photosphere, thousands of kilometers into space, propelled by colossal energies, then ordering themselves along the elegantly curved lines of electromagnetic waves.

With Cristian Pentelescu, the volume is established as an autonomous formal reality, which speaks through its own power of expression. Rather, the forms are the expression of cosmic principles, such as those at the foundation of classical Chinese painting, yin and yang, from whose virtual breaths the "ten thousand beings and things" were born.

There is in his works a kind of attempt to transpose the Tao, in form, into an updated form. Rarely do his forms suggest, discreetly refer to the human figure, as in a "Pieta" in which the arches of the two emblematic figures of the sacred history of humanity, the Mother of God and Jesus descended from the wood of the cross, are, first, the plastic expression of the heartbreaking maternal pain, while that of the Son is the arched curve of the body held in the mother's arms, brought by the temporary death which announces that, after the Resurrection, Jesus will become "Lapis excelsis", the keystone of the temple which He will destroy and restore in three days, under the sign of the new law of love and forgiveness." - Onisim Colta