In the contemporary art space Sandwich Library from Ateliers Malmaison, visitors can explore the exhibition HUMAN BEENGS by Răzvan Năstase, a sensitive foray into his family’s photographic archive. The exhibition will finish with a closing event scheduled for Thursday, July 31, at 6:00 PM at the Sandwich Library.
“In his most recent series of works, Răzvan Năstase engages with his family’s photographic archive, which spans over fifty years. The faces, transferred onto canvas and reworked through an artistic practice that deliberately cuts through successive layers of color, are recontextualised—transformed from their almost vernacular status into enduring witnesses that accompany the artist throughout his process.
In this interpretive framework, beengs, an intentionally misspelt construction, becomes a poetic gesture, evoking those who once were and still live within us. It plays on the tension between being and been, suggesting a form of past presence, a living memory.
The weight of encountering the figures who have organically shaped the artist’s becoming is reinforced by the specificity of the exhibition space, which he chooses to treat as a domestic setting for intimate encounters. An installation of old lamps subtly animates the portraits, their yellow light gently amplifying the figures’ aura.
Năstase digs into his family’s memory, completing a counterintuitive process: while family heritage usually fades over time, its edges worn down to the confluence of diffuse affective traces, here, the artist rushes to intensify those blood ties, to deepen them through the physical gestures enacted on the canvas.” (curatorial text)
Răzvan Năstase (b. 1991, Bucharest) is a visual artist and photographer. His practice lies at the intersection of painting, photography, and installation, exploring themes such as identity, affective memory, and mental space. He graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Painting Department (BA in 2013, MA in 2015), and previously studied at the “Carmen Sylva” Art High School in Ploiești. His works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and independent art spaces in Romania and internationally, including Los Angeles, Milan, Madrid, Stockholm, and Vienna in solo and group exhibitions. He is particularly interested in connecting personal experience and social realities, constructing visual narratives oscillating between fragility and strength, intimacy and broader context. He lives and works in Bucharest, dividing his time between his studio practice, photography, graphic design, collaborations with artists, cultural venues, and independent initiatives.
