The exhibition “Modern Apocrypha” was part of the Romanian Cultural Week organized by the Central European University, Budapest, in January-February 2005.
INSTEAD OF AN OPENING
Since there will be no opening for this exhibition I thought we could do it another way. Here I am writing to you, as a frozen speech from the artist to the beloved audience.
Theoretically speaking, I believe that painting is not literature, in the sense that an image does not need an explanation or a description. In practice, I myself enjoy much better an exhibition which displays stories, both in images and in words.
This story is a Romanian one because my eye is impregnated by the orthodox icons, it is medieval because I am fascinated by the legends of the saints, it is general because it is about color and texture and decorated surfaces.
I believe that art, as well as the apocryphal texts, has the right to modify, re-interpret and add to the taste of medieval images. All my paintings exposed here are scenes from the legends of the saints or images from the life of Christ, preserving the medieval atmosphere but adding…the personal touch. They are visual apocrypha which preserve but in the same time modify their medieval models, they are my modern apocrypha.