The exhibition “Transfer” by the artist Gheorghe Ilea, presented by Relicvar Gallery, is the result of a profound artistic collaboration in which the works of Ana Lupaș are reinterpreted by Gheorghe Ilea in a personal and spiritual manner, resulting in a shared creative endeavor that explores memory, time, sacrality, and the mystery of art.
“The meeting between Ana Lupaș and Gheorghe Ilea took place during the organization of the ‘Atelier 35’ Cenacle in Zalău, where Gheorghe Ilea distinguished himself through several important exhibitions and specialized awards. The performance ‘Groapa de gunoi’ (The Garbage Pit), which Gheorghe Ilea realized in 1994 in his native village of Bucea, would later be considered by Ana Lupaș one of the most important performative actions in Romania, deserving greater attention, perhaps even international recognition.
Ana Lupaș’s influence on an entire generation of Romanian artists of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the decisive role she played in the genesis of experimental art in Romania, are well known. Nevertheless, the collaboration between the two artists, which began in 2013, is not of a ‘mentor–apprentice’ type. It was built on mutual trust, on the intuition of an axiological continuity, and on the respect for complete freedom of thought and creation. The gesture of restoring a tapestry work worn down under the pressure of time—assumed by Ana Lupaș as a form of penance, as an ‘exercise in humility’ (1961)—is taken up by Gheorghe Ilea. He adheres to a creed, to something indefinable that gradually reveals itself along the way. He does not simply copy certain works, but participates in them. The textile artworks are ‘transferred’ into painting—a ‘woven painting’—enlarged in scale and revived in what are presumed to be their original colors. The course of this project of recovery / restitution, of ‘re-awakening’, leads to the reaching of the same notes, the same sounds, or, as Ana Lupaș herself testifies, ‘perhaps we have come equally close to that which lies beyond us.’
The boldness of Ilea’s direct intervention on a ‘Flying Carpet with Banners’ (1961–1964), which he marks by adding a sewn and colored angel, reveals his closeness to the intimate universe of Ana Lupaș’s creation, about which it has been said that it constantly leaves the earth, escaping into other spaces, in a continuous movement toward a ‘beyond’ where one may hear the music of the spheres. Interestingly, Ilea has no explanation for why he adds the angel to the reverse side of Ana Lupaș’s work. It is thus a hidden, shy angel that reveals its strange angelophany only if we deliberately turn the wing of the flying carpet, from which only the warp threads remain. This extremely poetic fact shows the sensitivity that Gheorghe Ilea reaches while working on this project, as well as the sense—whether lucidly or not—that he somehow finds himself outside the earthly realm, in the area of the sacred. This can also be observed in another work in which the degraded carpet becomes an epitaph through the addition of a Christ figure scratched with the tail of the brush onto fresh red paint. We do not know whether Gheorghe Ilea was thinking at the time of a work by Ana Lupaș entitled ‘Means of Reaching Heaven’ (or another, ‘Means of Reaching the Sun’, 1962–1964), but he intuitively adhered to her belief that a work of art should not be overtly argued, nor unilaterally explained or perceived, but should ‘increase the mystery of the world with its light,’ in the Blagian sense.
The exhibition “Transfer” (the title belongs to the artist) by Gheorghe Ilea enjoyed the full support of Ana Lupaș, who made available the original works on which the project was based. Within the exhibition they function as a documentary foundation, a ‘legend’ (in the cartographic sense) that helps us read Gheorghe Ilea’s creation resulting from this collaboration.”
Vasile Istrate
The exhibition can be visited until April 5, 2026.
