Sector 1 Gallery presents the exhibition “When I paint I know I will die! A visual essay on van Gogh” signed by the artist Bogdan Vlăduță.
Monumental works, installations, drawings, and in-situ interventions reflect the duality of the relation that was formed between the artist and the great master Vincent van Gogh, which continues to stimulate new creative impulses in the generations of artists who followed him.
In the written essay that completes the exhibition, the artist shares with the public the fascination for the work and personality of the great master, who was whether a source of light or one of unrest and torment.
The revealing moment occurred in 2013 in Paris following a visit to the Musée d’Orsay, where, according to the artist’s confession, Van Gogh’s works were standing out from the rest.
“This is not a visual essay with exhaustive proposals and not a way to boldly rash Van Gogh’s life, illuminating entirely on unknown areas, expelling the mystery. It is not even a promise to take over the common meaning given by the world, using Vincent’s drama. My approach aims, rather, to capitalize on the weak, soft (invalid!?) part that lies in Vincent, of the crumbs that fall from the mass of the great normative culture.
Van Gogh had in him the ingredients that leaven such a fragile painting. The miserable life, the failure following the failure, the impasse of social relations, the lack of a worldly horizon, the cultivation of fatality, the despotic character, the incorruptibility, the sense of the absolute, the desire to become the ” God’s poor” as a priestly apostle or as a painter. Van Gogh has the faith of a non-believer, of one who verifies by his means. The tools are the painting, the human relationships where he “burned”, his diseases, and his exit from the confessional framework of Christianity – here where, paradoxically, he discovers from the orthodox approaches, unknowingly, the faith of the East. ” (Bogdan Vladuta)
Born in Bucharest in 1971, Bogdan Vlăduţă is an important artist in the Romanian art scene. Between 1996-2009 he was a lecturer at the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In 2009 he co-founded the Recycle Nest gallery. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest. Throughout his career, he has received several awards, including the Anastasia Foundation’s Painting Award and the “Europe Seen by Romanian Painters” Award of the National University of Arts in Bucharest. He exhibited on the local art scene, but also internationally in Paris and New York. His works can be found in public and private collections in the world.
The exhibition can be visited until May 29th at the Sector 1 Gallery (Combinatul Fondului Plastic, Băiculeşti Street, no. 29, Bucharest).
