This exhibition ran from September 20 - October 4 at Atelier17 in Sibiu (Vopsitorilor street, no. 17), an artist-run gallery coordinated by artist Valentina Cristea. This exhibition was part of the nation-wide event White Night of the Galleries 2025.
This is the text I wrote for the exhibition:
“War in suspension. The landscape of devastation is still a landscape is the continuation of my project on the war in Ukraine, initiated in 2023 once with the Russian invasion. Meanwhile, the genocide in Gaza also began, so I went on making works on this subject. This is a project that distills the energy of dramatic moments and that wants to amplify the awareness of the urgency that the Russian invasion has created, a reminder that the war is not over yet and is very close to us.
The first part of this project, which I presented in 2024 as a solo show at Mielul Alb, entitled Imagining the war dragging to a halt, included artworks made with charcoal representing war scenes, explosions and devastated landscapes. In this new exhibition, I have included more recent colored abstract-expressionist artworks in different mediums (acrylics, markers, pastel pencils) and on various surfaces (paper, canvas, textiles), and figurative works on paper (acrylics and oil) that either represent the architecture of devastation, or first responders doing their job.
While creating these new pieces, I have aimed to portray human solidarity and resistance in moments of great tension, but also to conceive an abstract visual language that would be subjective and personal, with which I could approach the destruction caused by the war machines, employing the contrast of vibrant colors and improvised painting instruments to describe ballistic trajectories or other military plans that have ruined hundreds of thousands of lives. Thus, I have started to conceive a universal and minimalist language, essentializing forms by which I could describe these events, first of all, searching for explanations for an unconceivable situation and, secondly, to ignite an emotional response in those viewers who wish to enter in a dialogue with the works of art. The sharp paint strokes, sometimes automatic, applied directly on the material, symbolize the glacial violence of war machines and allude to the force of impact and the speed at which a life can be ended. In this project, I was constantly aware of the physical act of painting as an act of resistance, appealing to the collective subconscious to express lived emotions while the war is intensely broadcasted for everyone to see.
Photo credit: Gabriel Bogdan
At the end of the exhibition at Atelier17, the main artwork "False Horizon" (oil on linen canvas, 2024) was taken over by the artist-run gallery Cer Deschis in Sibiu (Faurului street, no. 18), which is hosting the group exhibition "Art Piece / Peace" (October 3 - February 15, 2026) curated by Roxana Ionescu.
