The artist Bogdan Vlăduț’s latest exhibition, “Darkness from the White Light/ Întunericul din albul luminii,” which opened recently at Relicvar Art Space, fascinatingly explores the subtle relationship between the sacred and the profane, between tradition and contemporaneity.
About the selection of works brought together in the exhibition, the artist Bogdan Vlăduță says: “[…]The paintings chosen for the exhibition in the Relicvar gallery are, a good part of them, works made many years ago together with fresh ones recently elaborated. But what makes this basement gallery space special is how the church sits on top of it like a hen waiting for the eggs to open. Therefore, the paintings that will be shown between the walls at the bottom of the church will try to be like notes that clarify the meaning of the text written above.”
“Achieving, with the impetuosity that comes from mature craft, a visual elegance devoid of sweetening, suggesting subtly, but without excessive and sterile equivocation, the sacred in the mundane and the relationship of the pictorial image with time seems to be the most important coordinates of his art. From the latter’s perspective, Vlăduță’s paintings remind of the imitation ruins of some of the English gardens (but often also present in continental gardens) from the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. These artificial ruins were fragmentary edifices, thus built to resemble ancient vestiges: not only their appearance, but their very visual structure was old, connoting a prestigious antiquity and an aesthetic relevance proven by the test of time, from the very moment when we, they appeared in the fashionable landscape ensemble, in other words, the current whole. Or, precisely a special mastery in mastering a paradoxical anachronism, a handling of it that does not cancel it nor mitigate it excessively but still allows it to be fruitful of meaning even in the present, seems to be the most elevated form of sophistication incarnate feverish in Bogdan Vlăduță’s painting.”, Bogdan Iacob described the art created by Bogdan Vlăduță.
The exhibition can be visited until November 10 at the Relicvar gallery in Cluj-Napoca.
