Gheorghe Ilea
01 Dec 2012 - 24 May 2013
GHEORGHE ILEA
Ciucea-Galpaia
1 December 2012 – 24 May 2013
Galeria Plan B is pleased to invite you on Friday, the 30rd of November, to the opening of the project Ciucea-Gălpâia, realized by the artist Gheorghe Ilea on the facade of the Paintbrush Factory.
Gheorghe Ilea has gradually constructed a relationship with time, history and the past which marks his entire work and separates it from most of the painting trends in the company of which he developed his practice ever since the 80s. Experimenting with all that technique and themes can offer, the artist takes different stylistic routes which make up a fresco of art history built with great craft and intelligence.
The project Ciucea-Gălpâia started with the artist’s fascination with the wooden church of Gălpâia painted by Ioan Pop of Românași more than two hundred years ago. This was saved by Octavian Goga (Romanian poet and politician, 1881-1938) and reconstructed at the museum of Ciucea.
Gheorghe Ilea photographed the interior of the church and studied the remains of the original painting and the traces of time. Today the initial colors and shapes are difficult to make out and the result of degradation in time seems now the abstractization of things impossible to preserve. The artist has chosen the image of the nave vault for painting a reproduction thereof as closely as possible. What Ilea set for himself does not relate to the aesthetics of painting, but to finding a method for communicating and empathising with the model – in this case the church in Ciucea. The twentyfour painted canvases which form an oversized image of the church nave observe reality, but also deviate thereafter from it. The artist proceeds forth guided by a new rule – the ethical one – as it seems unfair to the model to reproduce it in such a state of degradation and to present it to the public. How do we look at something which is destrioyed, fragmented or dislocated?
If the church walls bore the traces of time, then the painting itself – the copy of the model – needed to undergo this irreversible process too. Ilea continued by exposing his paintings to accellerated degradation conditions, in a way repeating the traumatic path of the church. The filter of time which separates what lasts from what fades away is backed by the unpredictability of nature and man’s interventions. In this way, the alleged museographical protection of any art object is questioned by the artist and the iconoclastic gesture of its destruction is fully undertaken. Only in this way one can truly speak of oblivion, disappearance and death.
The Ciucea-Gălpâia painting is exhibited on the facade of the Paintbrush Factory and is left there uncovered and unprotected for four months. It can be viewed during this process of degradation and the end of its public show period will be marked by a solo exhibition of the artist.
Ciucea-Galpaia
1 December 2012 – 24 May 2013
Galeria Plan B is pleased to invite you on Friday, the 30rd of November, to the opening of the project Ciucea-Gălpâia, realized by the artist Gheorghe Ilea on the facade of the Paintbrush Factory.
Gheorghe Ilea has gradually constructed a relationship with time, history and the past which marks his entire work and separates it from most of the painting trends in the company of which he developed his practice ever since the 80s. Experimenting with all that technique and themes can offer, the artist takes different stylistic routes which make up a fresco of art history built with great craft and intelligence.
The project Ciucea-Gălpâia started with the artist’s fascination with the wooden church of Gălpâia painted by Ioan Pop of Românași more than two hundred years ago. This was saved by Octavian Goga (Romanian poet and politician, 1881-1938) and reconstructed at the museum of Ciucea.
Gheorghe Ilea photographed the interior of the church and studied the remains of the original painting and the traces of time. Today the initial colors and shapes are difficult to make out and the result of degradation in time seems now the abstractization of things impossible to preserve. The artist has chosen the image of the nave vault for painting a reproduction thereof as closely as possible. What Ilea set for himself does not relate to the aesthetics of painting, but to finding a method for communicating and empathising with the model – in this case the church in Ciucea. The twentyfour painted canvases which form an oversized image of the church nave observe reality, but also deviate thereafter from it. The artist proceeds forth guided by a new rule – the ethical one – as it seems unfair to the model to reproduce it in such a state of degradation and to present it to the public. How do we look at something which is destrioyed, fragmented or dislocated?
If the church walls bore the traces of time, then the painting itself – the copy of the model – needed to undergo this irreversible process too. Ilea continued by exposing his paintings to accellerated degradation conditions, in a way repeating the traumatic path of the church. The filter of time which separates what lasts from what fades away is backed by the unpredictability of nature and man’s interventions. In this way, the alleged museographical protection of any art object is questioned by the artist and the iconoclastic gesture of its destruction is fully undertaken. Only in this way one can truly speak of oblivion, disappearance and death.
The Ciucea-Gălpâia painting is exhibited on the facade of the Paintbrush Factory and is left there uncovered and unprotected for four months. It can be viewed during this process of degradation and the end of its public show period will be marked by a solo exhibition of the artist.