The exhibition “Headies” signed by Alexandru Ciubotariu, a.k.a. The Square Cat, the most famous street artist in Romania, was extended for another week. It is his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, organized by Estopia Art Gallery in Lugano, the third most important financial center in Switzerland.

The characters of the Square Cat, which can be discovered all over Romania in the most unexpected corners, now occupy the space of the Estopia Gallery. The characters that populate the exhibition space are oversized and unsettling. The artist Alexandru Ciubotariu removed the parts that he considered irrelevant to capture the emotion “transposed into the concrete of the facial expression”. In his approach, he wanted to capture emotions and states intensely experienced during the two years of the pandemic that he chose to share with the public. The emphasis on expression was also influenced by the way we communicate today through the excessive use of emoticons in interacting with others.

“Instead of describing what we feel, we prefer to send an emoticon, which seems to us to be appropriate to that state of mind. I chose to express such feelings without the filter of the communication code with which we have become accustomed too much today” (Alexandru Ciubotariu)

Empower Artists talked to Irina Ungureanu, co-founder of Estopia Art Gallery and Alexandru Ciubotariu about the experience of the first solo exhibition in Switzerland, about the gallerist-artist relationship and how the Swiss public received the exhibition.

You have decided to extend by another week the first solo exhibition of the artist Alexandru Ciubotariu a.k.a The Square Cat organized by Estopia Art Gallery in Lugano, Switzerland. Have you considered presenting the show at the Bucharest space of the Estopia Gallery?

Irina Ungureanu: Indeed, the exhibition Headies / Căpățâni, which opened at Estopia Lugano on June 9, curated by Claudio Scorretti, who is also the gallery’s director, has been extended by a week, so it can be visited until June 30. After the positive echoes from Lugano, we want to bring the exhibition to Bucharest, for sure! Especially since, for a well-known artist such as The Square Cat, for whom the studio is the street itself, the audience is used to seeing him working, to feel his pulse, to naturally enter the world of his characters! It would therefore be unusual for the Bucharest public to be deprived of contact with this new series of works, a gallery of portraits that carry with them a whole load of contradictory experiences and anguish accumulated since the world took a new, unexpected turn. Because the Headies series has been created in the last year and a half, that is, in a period of solitude, restrictions – a particularly challenging and insolent one for an artist who feeds/nurtures himself from the energy and life of the street and the world in which he lives and works. For now, the Bucharest space of the Estopia Gallery is temporarily closed, but we hope that the opportunity to organize an exhibition with the works of Alexandru Ciubotariu will soon appear here as well.

How did the idea of moving street art into an art gallery come about?

Irina Ungureanu: The idea was born a year and a half ago, when Alexandru told us animatedly about these enormous characters who occupied his mind and who, to quote him, “could not be kept under lock and key for a long time”. He decided to let them go, so to speak, but the condition was that they could not move like this, freely, on the street: abnormal, explosive, they had to be contained somehow, and the space of the gallery seemed to us the perfect place to occupy. Because these heads – as Alexander called them from the beginning – were thought of as immersive mediums, the spectator would be almost forced to look in the eye, and, at the limit, even to let himself be occupied by them. As their author thought of them, they are an oversized staging of the vacuum of our contemporary communication. Instead of directly and diversely expressing our emotions, says The Square Cat, we filter them through the visual templates of social media, we choose an emoticon instead of enjoying, laughing, crying, or being present when our deep, true, unfiltered reaction is needed. Here, in the gallery, as Alexandru Ciubotariu tells us, meeting these characters who are coming out of themselves, you have no escape: you have to face them too!

How did the collaboration between Estopia Art Gallery and Alexandru Ciubotariu begin?

Irina Ungureanu: I would say that it is a collaboration that started long before the actual opening of the Estopia Gallery, 3 years ago. Before working together for this exhibition, we collaborated on other projects, such as a beautiful urban art project that was called the Open Air Street Art Museum, which lasted for several months in an alternative space consisting of sea containers, in the Old Center of Bucharest. Another experience that we remember with pleasure was the collaboration with Imago Mundi – Luciano Benetton Collection, in which a very special episode was the fact that the Imago Mundi team came to Bucharest and made a portrait of Alexandru Ciubotariu, filming him at work on the street and going through, for several days in a row, the most representative places where his art overlapped with life and even with the history of the city, from portions of the wall on Lipscani, on Calea Victoriei and at other points, to the Fandom comic bookstore that was until the other day on Edgar Quinet Street, and reaching the roof of the Cărturești bookstore, from where one of his iconic characters still watches today. These previous experiences have created a familiarity and mutual knowledge, so the exhibition now is an almost natural continuation of the dialogue between us and we are glad that we managed to make it possible!

How would you describe the artist-gallerist relationship, but the artist-curator relationship?

Alexandru Ciubotariu: I do not have much experience in this field, but from what I have had so far, I can say that it was a professional relationship doubled by creative freedom that I think at some point all artists should try in one form or another. It frees you from some pressures that you do not master and can potentiate your creation.

Were you tempted to intervene on the buildings of Lugano or why not on the exterior walls of the Estopia Gallery?

Alexandru Ciubotariu: No, definitely not. I choose very carefully any intervention in the public space, and in one I do not know (such as the one in Lugano) I avoid intervening. I prefer to work in urban spaces that I know, and only in special situations (festivals or express invitations) do I choose to draw in new places. Sure, the outer walls of the gallery sound good, but I think in this case the focus that I brought inside this space for me is enough and it would not have been the case, now, to double it with an intervention outside.

You have participated in numerous exhibitions in Romania and abroad. How would you describe the experience of your first solo show in Switzerland?

Alexandru Ciubotariu: The emotional investment I placed in this exhibition was enormous. It is the merit of the Gallery that it managed to mobilize me in this endeavor and I thank them. The fact that I managed to figure out what I set out to do had a satisfying effect without even thinking about its finality. That it happened in Switzerland is all the better, especially since all the organizational threads did not require an extra effort for me, or not one that would divert the pleasure of this exhibition.

How was the exhibition received by the Swiss public – I am referring to both professionals of the art and the general public?

Irina Ungureanu: Presenting a street artist in a gallery and outside the cultural space in which he established himself is undoubtedly a challenge! On the other hand, urban art enjoys a special aura in these times, the public has learned more and more to appreciate and seek it, and the public in Switzerland is no exception! The curiosity of those who came to see the exhibition is amazing, as the desire to understand the story of the Square Cat and its characters, and is true both for the general public, but also for the artists who crossed its threshold, and for the professional public. The curatorial and scenographic concept of the exhibition mattered a lot – and here the idea of the curator Claudio Scorretti to let the works “flow” fluidly, practically capturing the walls and alternating with objects and with a horizontal way of placing bas-reliefs that look like enormous mouths opened to swallow, as a kind of duplicates of the Bocca Della Verità pointed upwards, contributed decisively to the success of the exhibition.

Born in 1979 in Călărași Alexandru Ciubotariu, a.k.a. The Square Cat, graduated from the Graphics Department of the George Enescu National University of Arts in Iasi in 2004. In 2017 he became a member of the Union of Fine Artists in Romania.
The Square Cat, the character that made him famous as an urban artist, can be encountered in the most unexpected places in Bucharest and in many other Romanian cities, on walls, meshes, in bookstores, and other public spaces. The Square Cat became a protagonist of the first street art book in Romania, published by Vellant in 2009.
He participated in over 100 exhibitions in Romania and abroad, he is the founder of the Comic Strip Museum, in partnership with the National History Museum of Romania, and published his works in over 90 magazines in Romania, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, and Serbia.
He illustrated over 20 children’s books and in 2021 he curated and participated in a live drawing at the exhibition 155 Years of Comic Strips in Romania, 1860 – 2015, at the National History Museum. He illustrated over 50 comic books and his works appeared in over 10 street art albums. He is a recipient of over 35 awards at art competitions, festivals, and comic book salons.

Claudio Scorretti and Irina Ungureanu, the two founders of Estopia Art Gallery, organized over 50 solo and group exhibitions of Romanian and foreign artists, published catalogs, and organized conferences on contemporary art phenomenon in South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The two focused on researching the most innovative art practices in these regions and creating opportunities for emerging artists. In the last 5 years, Claudio Scorretti and Irina Ungureanu have reviewed numerous portfolios of artists and published 14 catalogs as part of the Imago Mundi – Luciano Benetton Collection global project.