Born in 1983 in Constanta, Andrei Costache studied abroad at Suffolk University, Ipswich, UK (2011-2014) and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London (2016-2018), majoring in sculpture.
His artistic practice includes multiple mediums of expression from drawing to sculpture, installation, digital art, three-dimensional painting, exaggerated photography, inflatables, public art, architecture, and oversized clothing.
Andrei Costache has a permanent public sculpture in Futura Park in Ipswich, UK, a project won in an art competition. He exhibited at New Contemporaries (2015) and the Venice Biennale (2019) in the Casanova Museum.
After 11 years spent in Great Britain, including six years in London, Andrei Costache returned to Romania in 2022. In 2023, he had his first solo show in Romania “Honey Drops Tripping Through My Veins” at the Mobius Gallery in Bucharest. Currently, he lives and works in Bucharest.

Every artist has a story. Please tell us, when did you feel that you were meant to be an artist?

When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor like Brad Pitt. Then I started drawing at around 7 years old. During that time my vision of the world was forming and merging into a great philosophical artistry. By the age of 12, I started flirting with technical drawings and was noticing how I could make compositions that could be built in the world. I felt that I wanted to design houses and larger sculptures like skyscrapers. After all, it is some kind of child’s play, with bricks and sandcastles. Everything is a shape and a colour.

How would you describe your art and how important is it for you to convey a message?

Art should be described by the one who reads it. I do not read it, nor am I a viewer of my works. I am rather a producer of facts and habits that I acquire over time. I develop a lot of work in a fast pace motion, and I spend less time thinking about whether I am going to convey messages through my art. I feel like ideas form at a cognitive level, and something tells me the message is in the air. I just catch it in ascendence.

It is said that the artist transposes a part of himself into his creation. How do your works reflect your personality?

Yes, I admit that I have experienced intense and palpable moments in the transpositional zone, but my personality is completely detached from the emotional admonition towards creation. Works have a way of manifesting themselves within revelations and circumstances, they are not necessarily inherent, they amplify reality from the immediate proximity of the place. They respond to the need to respond, to take initiative, to highlight a gap, an empty space, with sublimity.

What are the stages of your creative process, from an idea or inspiration source to the final work?

There are many ways to work, express, and exercise the artistic practice. An artist is a mediator/messenger of an idea. The idea is a reaction. Thus, the result communicates interdependently with certain external factors that get in the way of the artist beforehand or even in retrospect. My process is permeated by a series of contradictory and separate events, which I combine, cover totally or partially as a fused object. It can contain the truth.
There are many sources of inspiration, and I remember when I started painting around 2007 thanks to Van Gogh. The final work is a total disconnect from reality. A parallel world that demands to be and is truer than our everyday reality. Because we enter the matrix, and there we find out that everything is possible. While, on the other side, everything is finite. I am rebelling in all possible ways to revenge Zorro. Although Darth Vader is waiting somewhere in another universe. I fight with the brush, with the electric jigsaw, with the sewing machine to become a Jedi.

In your works, you approach different ways of working, using materials such as concrete, plaster, wood, and canvas… What makes you explore all these artistic mediums?

I am interested in realising a systematic grid with my material explorations. When I say grid, I mean directly architecture, the fact that everything starts with a detailing of a scheme. Like a football field. In my head I have the shape I want to take out of the material, I have the plan and inevitably, the solution acquired through a tactile and indisputably inquisitive experiment. I mean, there is something curious about it. You start by putting your hands in plaster, and processing it, the same goes for concrete, if you are not hands-on, you might lose its durability. With the wood, the cloth, is the same thing. They produce a compendium with which I, as an artist, capitalize on an immaterial state in the mundane infinity. I translate it so you can see it.

I am driven by immortality and the daily quest to get one step closer to the truth. Heidegger said: “Around a sculpture, you contemplate and converse with God.” I want thoughtful reflections to appear and disappear in the viewer’s mind. As they are in Open AI now, on ChatGPT and MidJourney, new frequencies take the place of something that does not exist yet.

When do you know you have finished a work? Tell us more about the whole experience until you are completely satisfied with the result.

When I discover infinity. Keith Haring was constantly drawing on everything. At some point, Emil Cioran realized that a writer must write from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed. Just like the artist: painter, sculptor, architect, designer, photographer, graffer, whatever. We are a conglomeration of post-everything emphases that cannot be fully satisfied. I have heard the saying that the poor eats until he is full, while the rich never gets full because he does not have a stop button on their income, the food keeps on coming to their table and he keeps getting full. This fact can be applied not only to “the trophic of food”.

So it goes with the information, with the flow of money, the chain of investments, and the courage to stay hungry until the end. In a way, hunger is the drive. The hunger to live. Inflation and insolvency. The result can go on in the world and be very opulently digested by the masses as we see happening with consumer products on the market.

Capitalism engages us already in a relationship with the rest of the world: how we dress, and how we present ourselves with the products, sneakers, or gadgets we display. Imagine a digital monster that archives our time codes and space expansions inside a big software. That is how I know when I finish a work, when it takes on an air of ageless youth, and the world begins to smell of youth.

You studied in Romania at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism for three years. Then you went to study abroad, where you stayed for 11 years. What was the context in which you decided to study in the U.K.?

After architecture, I went in search of shapes and colours, I challenged myself to go abroad to study arts. I arrived in England, because I had learned from a girlfriend I was with in Bucharest in 2009 that London is the cultural capital of the world, and she was going to start a master’s degree at Goldsmiths. In the first 5 years, I did the BA (“Bachelor of Arts”, as here, the undergraduate period: 3 years of Arts) in Suffolk. I met everyone there.

It was a place I was constantly leaving and returning to during that time. I have exhibited and been invited to residencies all over the country, in the Lake District, Wales, the Midlands, and on the east coast – the English Riviera. I wrote manifestos and travelled to Berlin and Venice on holidays. I took part in the Art Biennale, I was delighted and politically oppressed. Everything was happening on fast-forward and I was complexed by the impediment of living in a spell with their Brexit, and then, COVID.

However, I found the period quite productive. I remember during that time I was selected for New Contemporaries in England in 2015, an exhibition with tradition, where many famous artists of the past exhibited, including Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, and even the teachers I had in school. I was practically part of an elite world, at least that was instilled in me, it felt like flying above all.

To what extent did the contact with the British academic environment influence your art and artistic path? How did you feel about the transition from the Romanian artistic environment to the international one? Did you have more opportunities for development and exposure than you would have if you stayed in the country?

In 2016 I arrived from Suffolk to London. I was always visiting galleries and museums in London, met with friends with whom I was exhibiting. At some point, I was transporting my work all over England. I arrived in London like a typhoon. I started my MA (‘Master of Arts’, 2 years of Art) in September 2016 and graduated in July 2018. In class, because I was doing the MA and not the MFA, I was contextualizing, and I had to write many essays. Which I liked enormously because I could express myself in another format that I adore, namely, the word.

Political and social debates followed in school, from antiquity to the most recent forms of protest. Pussy Riot or Gorilla Girls were stars in our Art History class. Even those who wrote introductory texts in the first issues of Artforum in America were spoken of as pioneering art editors. It was all about English and American culture, which is highlighted by the abuse of other cultures, which they have oppressed over time. I mean, what was happening on the globe was simply recreated on a small scale, in a room of students, in a few hours.

We were amazed and were very attentive to the words of our teacher’s campaign against the anti-everything conventions of Great Britain – she was of Spanish origin. The history classes became so exciting that the students rioted against the teacher and filed a complaint with the school director to expel her, because she spoke unfavourably about England, for example about the period of slavery and rights for women in history, when England was still practicing an extremely savage downright negative policy. Our teacher, the ‘good one’ in my eyes, ‘from Spain’ in their eyes, lost her job in the second semester.

What I mean is that London is very strict and regulates very harshly participation in extremis, from people outside of their country, who protest and criticise England. The smallest manifesto is extirpated by a much greater form of abuse, which has its sources against human rights, if we analyse their form of acclimatisation and social stabilisation.

I somehow managed to slip through these policing alarms that took place in any institution, because I was working as an artist who demanded “freedom of speech” even when they objected against me, as a man from another country, who comments and retaliates through defence. These disputes between institutional authorities who had the rights on their side, where the law was not fined, and the rebellion of individuals quantified as in Orwell’s book ‘1984’, were only defined when the “emperor without clothes”, walking naked on the streets of London, wins.

I think the opportunities would be just as big here, even bigger, as my teacher told me before I returned to Romania: “You will be a bigger fish in a smaller pond!”. That’s what happened. I move quickly in all environments in which I bathe. I am a big fish. In London, I did not meet gallerists at openings, and during the weekdays, I would come across a person working at the reception, in the form of a student who fell from the sky there. Since I returned to the country, in Romania, I met with all the gallerists and curators at openings as if it were a big “fish release”. They are all here, as the first contact in the gallery, because the scene is smaller, although very much burgeoning.

You exhibited mostly internationally, and recently you had a solo exhibition at Mobius Gallery, an important contemporary art gallery in Bucharest. How different are the experiences?

I think they are very different, but not less important. The scene in England is on several levels. There is a scene in Suffolk, one in the North, one in the West, and one in every town, open museums or galleries, engaging in the artistic and cultural life. And here, just as we see in Timișoara, the cultural capital of 2023, several art scenes have developed in our country as well. Cluj seems to be reviving, Constanța has a new young director at the Art Museum, and Bucharest seems to me to be like London, through initiatives such as #DoiJoi or NAG, new and older galleries.

Granted, they have all been here for 20 years max, which means the space is still very young! Combinatul Fondului Plastic is a hotspot for art at the moment, even better than London. On a night when all the galleries are open, you meet with God and Jesus at the same time. There is Malmaison and artists’ studios spread all over central Bucharest, UAP, or OAR.

I am also interested in architecture. We do not have a skyscraper here. How can we talk about architecture without constructions that are globally important? I want to mention that the capital has a very diverse zone, many parts respect the rules of the game, but it can be much better, and I feel that the infrastructure is in full development.

Let’s consider education and medicine, good health for the mind and body, and we will prosper enough to network with the countries around us, at fairs and cultural events. I would base it on our local products, we should keep the country closed until we become self-sufficient, so that tourists come to us and look at us as purists. Because we have the shapes and colours from our ancestors. Imagine other countries without history. We need to stop selling ourselves so easily. Let’s keep everything in the country until we feel good about ourselves and our products. We need to work. A lot!

Last year you returned to Romania. Was it difficult to reconnect with the local art community? How did things go with your return? How did the collaboration with Mobius Gallery begin?

Roxana, the director at Mobius Gallery, said that I quickly got attached to people and things. The local art community is amazing! There are many artists on all levels. I recently went to a dance performance that inspired me, at AREAL, a space for choreographic development. Salonul de Proiecte, in Palatul Universul, is something new for me and it has a lot of potential. There is a Chinese gallery that promotes domestic and international artists, LeiLei Gallery, I think it’s cool! I made many friends within the new artists from Bucharest. I spent nights at Atelier35 and in other private studios. I love talking about art for hours at openings. I believe that many of the current happenings can be embodied by your presence and whoever comes. You must only get out of the house.

My collaboration with Mobius Gallery started in October 2022. I met Roxana for the first time in August, two months before we agreed to collaborate. I had returned from England, after 11 years, right then. I am originally from Constanța, so I used to come to Bucharest once a week to get in touch with the galleries. I knew about some, and I was surprised by others. Thus, I met the gallery and the gallerist with whom I was going to collaborate in the future. I liked it from the start. Roxana and Roman invited me to their place. They were amazing. They looked like some kind of rock stars to me. We got along very well. She brought all my works to Romania, from Koln, where I had previously managed to transport them from my studio in London.

Now, from January 2023 I moved to Bucharest. I find it honest and beautiful. Things in my life happened the way they did, probably because I looked for them. From my stage of work in England, when I was exhibiting in spaces where famous international artists passed through, it is a path that is formulated more like a state of mind, without having to do with a specific geography. I can create art anywhere, though it is much better at home, where I have the freedom to do and say what I want.

How do you feel about the art scene at the moment? How much has it evolved?

Our art scene is a good invention. A well-received prop, for everyone and with everyone. Let’s all go to school with this! Jokes aside, I think we all need to be very professional and thirsty to make things happen. Let’s stop deceiving each other, and let’s be serious with each other, otherwise, everyone can betray and yell at one another. We need to help each other a lot more, join hands and do things together. Let’s not let the stranger take our hard-earned work from under our noses.

Let’s value our work more and teach those who have nothing to do with art that they need it too. Because all of humanity grew up on art, it is the first form of acquiring knowledge and should be the last we go to bed with. All over the world, art is appreciated and invaded by sceptics, also by curious people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to know what new art in museums and galleries is, if they do not go and see it with their own eyes. The world is usually open to many interpretations and many financially powerful people have no idea about art. But those who know, who allow themselves to be initiated into this world, can discover real treasures, a new way of looking at and understanding the world.

At present, art collections, both private and in museums, certify the inestimable value of art. It is a world within a world. It seems like a simulation, a video game, a movie, a song, or a poem. Only art can make you feel like you are living in the present with everyone at once, as if it is a network of brilliant minds. Art today has only to gain. I think people in other industries do not know what they are missing. Everyone should come work with us! Let’s build a beautiful architecture! By the way, we also have Romanian Design Week, Diploma Show, MARe, and MNAC. This is so cool! Nevertheless, all the bets are on contemporary art. That’s where the big debates are! Come, get on the boat too!

Many times when entering a contemporary art gallery, the public in Romania is faced with the famous question “Is this art?”. Are the reactions of international audiences different?

First of all, people have to start from a text, if it does not make sense, tomorrow is another day, they can interpret it. The story of art is very elaborate, from Asia to South America, and Africa, art imposes self-transformation, it is poetic and spiritual, it raises you to the sky and then brings you down to earth. From Arabic mausoleums to Egyptian pyramids, and ancient edifices in Greece and Italy, art teaches you to know yourself better. It is a celebration of life. Art is art because the artist says so. After all, it has been validated by galleries, and it has been debated in schools and institutions because it changes something in the one who looks at it. There are art classes, and everyone wants to create art.

The politicization of art is the theme of the scripts, of the happenings, from the Fluxus group of the 70s or the impressionists whose art changed modernism, criticized in the first phase for how raw their brushstrokes looked because they painted light and shadows in an unreal way, never seen before; to the characters in the movies, the Marvel superheroes or Ai Weiwei who moved an entire world in the film he directed, ‘Humanity’ from 2018, when I was in London, when refugees were knocking on the door, arriving from countries devastated by war, on all European borders. Now, Ai Weiwei is making paintings out of 650,000 Lego pieces reinterpreting a 19th century Monet work called ‘Water Lilies’, beautiful like that, sidestepping everyone. AI, the new robot revolution, where fate, tragedy, love, dreams, and exploration meet in a beta version, played by computers, chatbots, and immersive online operating systems.

What is art if not the most powerful form of expression we have? Romantic, melancholic, and revolutionary. The audience is the same everywhere. The audience defines art and completes it. The public wants to participate, denounce, bet on art, auction it, to elevate it to the rank of a masterpiece. In Romania, I was struck by how many students there are at the galleries, like future artists. Those who come after us, the next generation. Overseas, the participants are older, more taught, calmer, and provincial people. Here there is only youth, and freshness, they must be taught! Must be accepted! All artists fought for freedom, for the liberation of all senses and expressions. The moment is opportune for us, wherever we are, to start expressing ourselves as we feel! Get a boost! We are with you, man!

What projects are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future?

Whatever comes. I want to build many projects in the future. I hope to meet enterprising people, create possibilities and opportunities for artists, and let everyone breathe this clean air. Let’s tour the country, let the whole globe hear about us. I want to work with experts from all fields, in architecture, go back to our habits, to build with wood and concrete, houses, skyscrapers, bridges, edifices, chairs, pavilions, etc. I have many fantasies rendered in Rhino and designed in AutoCad that I want to realize. I want us to do something top-notch, which has never been done before in our country! Let’s reach the biennial, win the Pritzker Prize, promote our inexhaustible culture, and build a new country! I want to paint! And never stop! To paint my dreams