The “Connections and Signs” Exhibition, opened between July 15th and September 10th, 2014 at Senso Gallery, gathered six contemporary Romanian artists who have reached the peak of their creation: Anca Boeriu, Marius Burhan, Gelu Costea, Cristian Ditoiu, Eduard Duldner and Vasile Tolan. The event gave the public an insight into the contemporary art through six micro-exhibitions, each artist displaying his/her latest works.
Doina Pauleanu, PhD, art critic and director of Constanta Art Museum, delivered the opening speech.
“Connections and Signs”, the new art exhibition opened at Senso Gallery in the Capital City is made up of six nuclei of personal exhibitions created by Anca Boeriu, Marius Burhan, Gelu Costea, Cristian Ditoiu, Eduard Duldner and Vasile Tolan (artists in alphabetical order), united by a will external to the group, but appealing enough to gather them together. Thus joined, connections cannot arise (although they are probably present at an individual level) from elective affinities, from mutual appreciation and friendship, as was the case with the creators of The Group of the Four, made up in 1925 by Tonitza, Dimitrescu, Sirato and Oscar Han, from a deliberate choice, free of inhibitions or prejudices – The Women Artists’ Circle from 1938, from a joint work, by which Paul Gherasim characterised the Prologue contemporary group established in 1985 (to account only some of the numerous examples), from a common attitude, which may manifest itself as refusal, fronde, harmony, or propriety, but from the exteriority which, in this case, can be subsumed to a patronage of the arts. A patronage of the arts which disregards the generation (though the exhibitors are relatively close in age, being born in 1953 – Tolan, 1957 – Boeriu, 1960 – Duldner, 1963 – Costea, 1967 – Ditoiu, 1977 – Burhan), public knowledge and recognition, vision, or approach, but (at the level of personal reception, happily overlaid with the public one) of value, the desire to bestow the well-deserved social presence of their own choices.
Joining these names, nevertheless, does not imply (from the point of view of the display and the correspondences that can arise spontaneously) discrepancies or dissonances; what brings the six artists closer is the seriousness of the approach they take, the work without syncopation, the genuine search for forms of expression compatible with their will of representation, but also with the contemporary exigencies, the authenticity, the character of the stage in an uninterrupted process, connotative languages, safety of options.
Connections can be found in the studies and majors studied (two of the six exhibitors defended their PhD at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, and the third is now a PhD student and most of them have attended postgraduate courses), in the large number of the exhibitions in the country and abroad, in the critical and laudatory remarks that their artwork has inspired, in belonging to personal and, therefore, privileged trends, of plastic investigation, in respect for craftsmanship, in the quality and depth of conceptual bequests; as for the signs mentioned in the title of the event, they are individualised and distinguishable in the view of each participant, offering the viewer unrestrained possibilities of choice and appropriation”. – Doina Pauleanu PhD.
This event was conducted with the support of Catena Group, through Catena for Art Program, and the Fildas Art Foundation.
