Brăteanu Gallery in Timișoara presents a double event, the opening of the sculpture exhibition “Soldiers and Angels” by the visual artist Ileana Oancea, which brings together a suite of two-dimensional works accompanied by several ronde-bosse pieces made recently, in mixed technique, curator Costin Brăteanu and the presentation of the album the visual artist Gabriel Kelemen “Hermetic Harmony of the Cosmos”, published at the West Publishing House in Timisoara in 2020.

Ileana Oancea (1977, Bucharest) is a visual artist with 20 years of experience. She graduated from the University of Arts in Bucharest, class of 2001, majoring in Sculpture. She has teaching experience in two universities and a doctorate in visual arts since 2006. She constantly exhibits in galleries and public spaces and collaborates in various projects, creative camps, group exhibitions, and public monumental sculpture, such as experimental archaeology projects.

“In the exhibition “Soldiers and Angels”, she brings together two contrasting images – one means war, chaos, but also aggression, and the other is the symbol of the connection between heaven and earth, between the seen and the unseen. But both of them carry with them signs of the duality in which they are; soldiers are not only metal, plates and weapons, but also children with colorful clothes and toys – a kind of amulets of their souls. They were children, and some still are. The soldier can be a friend, but he can be an enemy, he instills security and protection but also attack and aggression. Under the armor, if you look carefully, you can discover another world, you can always find traces of the child and innocence.

Angels are imaginary characters that oscillate between reality and imagination, between everyday and fantastic, between visible, palpable and invisible – thoughts and feelings. They have wings, of course, but also headphones, a watch or glasses. They are humanized or sometimes simplified, reduced to the essence – a juxtaposition of a geometric shape with the very idea of ​​flight – a cube with wings. Both of them connect two seemingly opposite worlds, juggle images and scenes from both sides, exist and coexist without contradictions.”

At the exhibition’s opening, Ovidiu Justinianu will speak about Ileana Oancea’s origins, personality, and creation.

About the album released by Gabriel Kelemen, Lucian Ionică remarked: “It is a large work of synthesis, structured in five chapters. The plates in the first of them follow the chronology of Genesis, starting from the white light in the form of the primordial sphere, then passing to the point, the plane and the imaginary straight line – understood as elements foreshadowing life, and finally, we reach the sinusoidal line, which suggests intelligence, through similarity to the convolutions of the brain. Edenic space is also evoked by the forbidden fruit, which can be an apple, grape or fig.

Visual analysis includes a large number of structures and phenomena, from mitochondria and the Golgi apparatus to the living cell and the cosmic scale, the solar system. Between these realities of a different order, surprising structural similarities are highlighted, offering a disturbing new perspective.

The photographic images are also spectacular. They present the results of laborious experimental research based on diffusion and convective processes, periodic chemical reactions, or the effect of standing and static waves on liquids or purverulent substances. Depending on the frequency and intensity used, distinct images are obtained, defined by a natural or cultural pattern, including—surprisingly—some with an anthropomorphic aspect. The approach of the university, artist and researcher from Timisoara is exciting because of the path it opens.”

The event will take place on April 30, at 7 pm, at the Brăteanu Gallery located in Timisoara on Str. Lucian Blaga No. 8.

The exhibition remains open until May 17 and can be visited between 9 – 5 pm.