At Atelier 35, the exhibition “Magic Misery” opens as the solo debut of artist Lorena Buta. The exhibition proposes an immersive space, built at the fragile intersection between play and discomfort, fiction and lived experience. “Magic Misery” invites the audience into a state of continuous dreaming, where identity remains fluid, reality takes on a cinematic dimension, and presence manifests as a pause between breaths.

The opening will take place on Friday, January 23, 2026, from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, at Atelier 35 (13 Șelari Street, Bucharest).

“Magic Misery” presents a new body of work by Lorena Buta, expanding her ongoing project UNREAL (2023–present), in which she investigates the individual’s detachment from the self and from the surrounding environment. The exhibition explores how stress, trauma, and technology-induced overstimulation can act as triggers for a phantasmagoric sense of alienation—a dreamlike state that dissolves identity, distorts the perception of reality, and calls into question the relationship between the individual and their own body.

Lorena Buta (b. 2001) is a Romanian artist who explores the unstable boundary between consciousness and reality, constructing visual environments that mirror the psychological instability of depersonalization and derealization. Her work translates these states into symbolic, atmospheric images in which clarity dissolves and perception shifts. Through her practice, she reflects on the erosion of identity and the dissonance between internal experience and external reality.