The artist couple Dana & Stéphane Maitec, with an international career in art and fashion photography and with exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva or Los Angeles, present, in May at ARCUB, the exhibition “Reflections #2”, curated by Irina Ungureanu.

In the current context where technology has a significant impact in the process of creating the image, Dana & Stéphane Maitec propose a new way of taking photographs, starting from the construction of the image by reflection in the mirror through a game of pleats and reflections of some sculptural objects built by the artists themselves in their own studio.
The exploration of perspectives, chromaticity, volumes and relief forms resulting from this way of working occurs in 2017, when the two artists move from the portrait photography that consecrated them to non-figurative photography, in an approach to investigate the image in a new area with a fluid vision of photography.

A selection of works from the “Reflections” series was presented for the first time in Romania in the exhibition “Maitec. Wood Gold Light”, at the National Art Museum of Romania, in 2019 / 2020.

“Instead of carefully constructed characters and scenography in previous projects – say Dana & Stéphane – in the “Reflections” series, we left the camera free to record the creative potential of the mirror.
I have not completely given up my passion for scenographic arrangement, I have built sculptural objects from a variety of light-reflecting materials, exploring textures, colors, their decomposition and recomposition through reflection in the mirror universe, but, contrary to previous photo series, here the figure human is completely missing.

We are witnessing a different show, where the camera captures the privileged moment when light, reflection and objects interfere in an unexpected dance that creates the story of these fragments of ephemeral unreality. It may seem unbelievable, but in this series, photography captures and immortalizes shapes and colors that do not, in fact, have a material reality: they are born and exist exclusively in the mirror.
On the other hand, since we started creating images from reflections, I have always felt the irresistible temptation to take a step further into the territory of the mirror, to penetrate into its depths, to explore its abysses”.

“The exhibited photographs bring to the fore the volumetric that seem eager to burst out of the much too narrow frame of two-dimensionality. Abstract photography, non-figurative, optical art and other contemporary artistic pursuits have demonstrated, moreover, the ability of photography – to borrow an expression from the presentation exhibition “Beyond the World We Know. Abstraction in Photography”, Norton Simon Museum, 2019 – to “loosen the grip of realism and suggest something beyond itself”.
This is what Dana & Stéphane Maitec propose in “Reflections #2”, where, in addition to the actual photo selection, the exhibition also builds an interference space where the image resulting from the reflection takes on a real volume.

In the scenography of this exhibition, the viewer is surprised by an object – a pillar of light – that “migrates” from the photo into space in the form of a hexagonal column, which, at first, you might not be sure if it is just the result of an illusion of perspective or actually has a material concreteness.

By creating this gap between two- and three-dimensional, Dana & Stéphane Maitec subtly lead the viewers into a space where the depth of the image almost ceases to be imaginary and begins to become an actually realized one.” – Irina Ungureanu, excerpt from the curatorial text

The “Reflections #2” exhibition at ARCUB – Gabroveni Inn can be visited between 12-30 May 2023, from Tuesday to Sunday, between 12:00 and 20:00. On Mondays, the exhibition is closed.

Dana & Stéphane Maitec

Dana & Stéphane Maitec have been working together since 1996 and form an artistic duo since 2002. Visual artists and photographic artists, they are members of the Maison des Artistes in France. They live and work in Paris. For almost three decades, the two artists have asserted themselves in fashion and portrait photography, and their work has appeared in the Financial Times, Elle, Where Magazine, Worth Magazine or Paris Magazine, among others.

A permanently cultivated affinity with the artistic environment led them, in 2004, to the studios of Romanian artists in Paris. This is how the Les ateliers des artistes roumains à Paris project was born, which remains an important testimony about the life and creation of Romanian artists in the French metropolis at the beginning of the new millennium. With the series Crowning Heads Machine (2013) and Café Flore (2016), their work defines their distinctive visual pattern in figurative photography, which privileges the scenographic composition of the image and the preference for black and white as the preferred artistic option.

With the Minimal project, from 2014, there is a gradual shift in perspective from figurative to non-figurative and abstract, and the Reflections series, begun in 2017, leads this search into an area now explored for the first time by the two artists, where at the origin of photography it is no longer the spectacle of human nature, but the play of reflections, chromatic innovation and the fluidity of light.

In recent years, Dana & Stéphane Maitec have participated, at Galerie Wagner, in Paris, in the exhibition La Couleur en Mouvement, alongside renowned names of the international artistic scene, such as Julio Le Parc or Carlos Cruz – Diez, in the exhibition Lemn Aur Lumină , at the National Art Museum of Romania in Bucharest, in 2019 / 2020, and at NAG Paris, in the Constructions exhibition from 2018, among others.
Their works are in private collections in Romania, France, Monaco, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, United States, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Germany and Mexico.

Tickets can be purchased online from arcub.ro, Entertix.ro, Myticket.ro, in partner stores and at the ARCUB ticket office (strada Lipscani 84-90).

Price: 35 lei (Category I). Pupils, students and pensioners who present themselves at the ARCUB Ticket Office with their ID cards/retirement coupon can purchase tickets at the price of 25 lei (Category II).

Event organized by the Capital City Hall, through ARCUB – Cultural Center of Bucharest Municipality and the Directorate of Culture, Education, Tourism.

Media partners: Radio Bucharest FM, Agerpres, Societatea de Transport Bucharest