Fonti

Marieta Chirulescu

15 Jan - 18 Mar 2016

© Marieta Chirulescu
Untitled, 2015
inkjet print, oil on canvas
35 x 50 cm
MARIETA CHIRULESCU
CYTWOMBLY CYFONTI
15 January - 18 March 2016

Galleria Fonti is pleased to announce “CYTWOMBLY CYFONTI” second solo exhibition in the gallery by Marieta Chirulescu.

In this show Chirulescu stages eight paintings of different sizes and formats from a greater body of works, which she developed since the beginning of 2015.

These paintings still show the characteristics of Chirulescu’s familiar style, but differ from it in subtle ways. What first comes to the eye, is the use of intense colors in the (printed) backgrounds as well as for the (painted) elements which complete most of the works. The range of colors however does not seem to originate from the classical painter’s palette, but from a Photoshop color panel, its hue and brilliance reminds one of a computer screen more than of natural light. Besides Chirulescu uses pieces of self-printed or generic patterned fabric to make joins with printed and painted canvasses.
These changes in register – which also show an expansion of means at the artist’s command – still cannot account fully for the different – at first even unfamiliar – look of the new works. In contrast to older prints and paintings the new pieces seem to be more dense, as if the different elements, they consist of had been synthesized in a much longer and more complicated process.

The changes in appearance might cause a slight feeling of diffusion on a formal level as well as in regard to what these canvasses are meant to be – their character seems hard to be identified. Are they referring to the history of painting (abstraction, impressionism, certain painters, écriture automatique), to digital images, computer-collages, photography, structural investigations of image-making or even CGI? In a way they refer to all of the mentioned sources, in parts or fragments, still never totally or as a whole, there can even be found completely contradictory signs within one painting.

By doing so they not only make it harder for the viewer to sort them into one of the well-known categories of style (which are always close at hand), they show that they are conscious of all these categories, and also of a lot of (post-)painterly strategies of evoking feelings of belonging to one or the other. Still Chirulescu’s paintings only show that the artist is aware of all these things without ever following one beaten track for too long at a time. By doing so, she opens up a whole new field for her work to expand into the future.

But still – as in most of her earlier work – an impression of painting informed by techniques of conceptual art emerges, whereas there is no certain strategy or train of thought whatsoever, which one could clearly identify or even follow. Chirulescu’s paintings present a different approach, there is no rational concept which could be verbalised easily or completely. Instead her paintings are infused with a diffuse idea of concept, constituting a constant source of conceptual indications, which creates an array of intensities.
 

Tags: Marieta Chirulescu