Biju Gallery in Cluj-Napoca opened recently the solo exhibition “Warm Hands, The Dim and Distant”, signed by the artist Andrei Ispas.
“A distinct continuity pervades the paintings and drawings of Andrei Ispas, operating within a space where the interior and the exterior merge with such subtle precision that occasional, nuanced perspective displacements guide the viewer’s gaze, making it doubt and orbit and, at times, circumvent around a point of interest.
The same ambiguity informs the interplay between the transparency of the image and its tangible, sensual, and vigorous materiality. The legibility of reciprocally defined forms does not undermine the autonomy of the gesture, apart from a mere impression, as the pictorial substance asserts its own agency. The corporeality of Ispas’s paintings transcends material concreteness, as it manifests equally through the generative movement that structures each compositional element. Light, often sidewise, consistently floods the image from distant planes, permeating the entire surface and, in certain instances, extending beyond the pictorial field into the frame itself, assimilating colors, which become almost like shades. In scenes of interiors, windows emit a radiance of their own, yet they offer no glimpse beyond; thus, both space and surface become luminous reflections, withholding their origin.
A sense of intimacy is coupled with an enigmatic atmosphere, predominantly arid, tranquil, and subtly disquieting; entirely devoid of human figures. Traces of human presence are perceptible only in abandoned industrial ruins, stagnant construction sites, vacant dwellings, or domestic settings characterized by relative disorder. A kitchen corner, for instance, with its table covered in unwashed dishes, is depicted from an angle that precludes the insertion of any implied figure.
In the few drawings where a silhouette appears, the subject remains distant and isolated, surrounded by a quasi-abstract array of hastily sketched objects. The melancholic aura of forsaken landscapes permeates the air around these solitary figures, often accompanied by books that serve as metaphors for escape—an almost transgressive form of reward. Intimacy is therefore not shared with the subjects depicted but with the image itself, which acts as a mediating presence. Significant differences in scale affect the intensity of this sensation, the way in which this feeling of intimacy remains intact across works and frames, yet it draws us closer to the painting or to the atmosphere it evokes.
The subtly dislocated spatial planes that compose Ispas’s scenes are in coherent alignment with their restrained yet insistent dynamism. Elongated brushstrokes, resembling ribbons or traces, reaffirm a continuity in which neither chromatic richness nor perspectival disruptions, however discreet or pronounced, dissolve; rather, they converge towards a heterogeneous and irreducible order. The realism inherent in these plane scenes, alongside the raw directness of the mark, candidly retains something of the ineffable quality of the visible of that which is within reach yet remains undisclosed.
Amid the haze that dissolves a dim, timeless light, woven through the apparent brushstrokes lies a pleasant pain, expanded to the vastness of the landscapes and the improbable elevation of their horizons. Within Andrei Ispas’ spacious compositions, delicately and courageously colored, the subject retreats into the distance, leaving the viewer in the presence of the painting itself as an alternative nature, just like the cool tonalities conceal a warmth of unspoiled emotion.” (curatorial text)
Bogdan Teodorescu
The exhibition can be visited at Biju Gallery (17 Memorandumului Street, Cluj-Napoca) until June 6, 2025. Free entrance.
