An exhibition by the National Institute of Heritage (INP, Ministry of Culture),

within ART SAFARI Dacia-Romania Palace, Lipscani 18-20, Bucharest,

from March 6 to April 6, 2025.

Artist: Alexandru Crișan

Curators: Dr. Iulia Gorneanu (INP), Dr. Ana Maria Crișan 

In the ROOTS (Radacini) exhibition, the Romanian heritage art and architecture, the modern and the contemporary creation are reciprocally potentiating each other, asserting the National Heritage Institute as a preserver of the immovable cultural and architectural values.

Intention and Message

ROOTS is a contemporary art quintessential visual discourse employing the Brutalisme Lyrique syntax to formulate apocryphal definitions of entropy. As the exhibited canvases will be visually examined and, hopefully, critically appreciated, this discourse with turn into a dialogue. As a matter of fact, the notion of dialogue is a foundational one for the Brutalisme Lyrique, which is a pictorial synthesis, a convergence point between the European Abstraction Lyrique and the nybrutalism architectural style. We are referring to the European Abstraction Lyrique as the post-war painting style evolution of Modernist principle, centered on an extremely subjective expressivity, as opposed to the programmatic character of Cubism or Surrealism. The reference to nybrutalism points out to the architectural minimalism defined in the middle of the 20th century in direct relation to the terms béton brut and art brut (a unifying notion that favors artistic expressions outside the canons of the respective era). Finally, to simplify the grid of interpretation suggested to the viewer, the notion of entropy is used in the sense of inevitable disintegration, of evolution towards an emptying of perceptible order. However, the lack of predictability usually associated with this process is a nuanced one in the Brutalisme Lyrique context; the nuances are the result of the artist’s will to define a unique pathway; such nuances are afforded by the search for sculptural volumes, for gravitational mergers, for the tactile, for the sustainable monumentality, for integrative architectural metabolism, for tectonic essences and for wide-breathing syntheses.

The Brutalisme Lyrique rejects the classicized forms of ethical realism, aiming to redefine the perception, not the artistic standard. It also opposes the illusions generated by the pseudo-geometric coincidences born out of pictorial attempts emptied of rational intent. Conversely, it seeks for a form of emotional monumentality parameterized by metallic-accented acrylic details in order to achieve both continuity and aesthetic unity.

Polysemantically constructed, the exhibition aims to modify the perception of the exhibition visitors, to transform them from simple viewers of the very instant into contemplators of time, sweeping between the recent works of Alexandru Crișan and the stages preceding the creation. With a particular key of understanding and reading, the exhibition explores sensitive lines of interpretation from the last decades, the connections and influences, cycling around the visual creative dialogues from the world, life and works of Constantin Brâncuși. The subtleties of the connections reside in the memory persistence of the places origin of origin, in the persistence of sound, of vibration, in the persistence of heritage sensations and coherent interpretations in a world of sedative noise.

The exhibition starts from the contemplative process that precedes the act of creation. It builds a bridge of artistic origins, bringing together the unchanged frames of a world seemingly frozen in time, in the recent image archive that immortalizes eternal fragments of vernacular heritage (in the Filmic Projection AI = VR * t² / Architectural Intelligence = Vernacular Resilience x time).

In a bona fide artistic SAFARI, through image, narrative, and documentary archive, ROOTS is an elaborate meditation on the act of pre-creative contemplation, highlighting the vernacular immovable heritage as a vital source of artistic inspiration, a starting point for modern and contemporary creation.

An exhibition by the National Institute of Heritage (INP – Ministry of Culture), within ART SAFARI Dacia-Romania Palace, Lipscani 18-20, Bucharest, between March 6 and April 6, 2025.

EXHIBITION

The exhibition is structured on two levels interconnected by origins, process and finality, levels that are structuring together a complex visual narrative by using contemporary abstract art and art photography as referential mediums.

THE WORKS OF CONTEMPORARY ABSTRACT ART
of Alexandru Crisan presents a visual journey from the luminous works such as the quadriptych Entropy VII, the diptych Entropy II, the diptych Entropy III, to the chiaroscuro of the OVERTURE pentadiptych, to which the works of Constantin Brâncuși are illustrated as an “antidote”. Acrylic works on paper, the Entropy series in particular explores the effects of shadow and light, brutally materializing matter and pigments, implementing a specific vibrato of light through the sub-technique of sgraffito, a lyrical abstraction of form and color. The presentation in composite formats specific to the artist (diptychs, quadriptychs, pentatriptychs), with this specific stereotomy amplifies the fragmentation of perception (see film projection ref. origins).
The works are accompanied by a particular NARRATIVE: texts that are sharing a common aesthetic background with the works and that are interconnecting fragments of the worldly life of the artist Constantin Brâncuși, with international artistic references from the visual arts, cinematography, and music – a SAFARI-type discorso.

With reference to abstract art works by Alexandru Crisan:
FINIS AFRICAE, UNDERWONDER (or IF That’s Your Woman, Kiss Her, Bro!), Entropia VII (raised by the wolves I’m vivisecting), Entropia II (T/ime’s A/rrow, the O/nomatopoeia), Entropia III (thru a self, n/arrow/ly), OVERTURE.

Credits & team:

Artworks: Alexandru Crisan

Curator’s texts: Cosmin Stanciu Dinulescu, Ana Maria Crisan, Iulia Gorneanu

Texts accompanying the works: from dialogues between Cosmin Stanciu Dinulescu & Alexandru Crișan

Exhibition team: Teodora Cheșu, Merve Uysal, Radu Onea, Sergiu Turlui, Maria Simion.

ROOTS IN FRAMES

AI  = VR * t²

Architectural Intelligence = Vernacular Resilience x time

The film projection brings together photographic frames that celebrate the anonymous image of the traditional universe, as a source of inspiration for artistic creation, in a meditation on the unchanged world that also served as a source of inspiration for Constantin Brâncuși.

In the spirit of the visual explorers (who were Brâncuși’s contemporaries) of the Romanian village, such as Kurt Hielscher, Alexandru Bădăuță or Take Papahagi, the artist and architect photographer Alexandru Crișan has re-created, between 2000 and 2024, a veritable archive of archetypal images dedicated to the XXI century viewer, aiming to capture perennial frames, in the footsteps of these promoters of the Romanian culture from the past. These photographs, digital and on B&W film stock, emphasize the interaction between light, shadow and the texture of materials, offering a visual testimony of a world that persists in personal and collective memory.

Constantin Brâncuși’s photography experiments have a certain pioneering quality to them, toying with light, shadow and texture in order to transform a simple piece into a symbol of eternity. AI = VR * t² reinterprets this vision, inviting the viewer to contemplate the static beauty of the vernacular domestic as a starting point for modern and contemporary creation. Anticipating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the artist Constantin Brâncuși, which is to be celebrated in 2026, in this apriori, the artist calls on the image of the original elements in a sensitive reading key. The photographic fragments illustrate the dynamism of static forms in light, capturing this vibrato as a particular vibration of light and shadow on raw materials. In this sense, Alexandru Crișan reinterprets traditional film techniques in the digital age, and amplifies this transformation of static images into a dynamic flow by applying experimental visual effects – distortions, kaleidoscopic and dreamlike effects, etc. – thus invoking a state of altered perception, and foreshadowing the lyricism of his artistic works through the sgraffito technique.

The exhibition invites the general public, via ART SAFARI, to rediscover the intimate beauty of the vernacular world – a world that, through its iconic frames, becomes a veritable archive of personal and collective memory, revives the tradition of Gorj, the original epicenter of Constantin Brâncuși, and opens new ways of interpretation in contemporary art.

Photographic selection (integrated in the filmic projection / Documentary Archive – COLLECTING ROOTS

The visual stock of the ROOTS exhibition is based on an extensive archive, B&W photographic art frames, developed by Alexandru Crișan between 2004 and 2024. This collection selectively documents the vernacular architecture of traditional houses and households in Romania, and includes frames made both in a rural context and in reference museum environments, such as the open-air ASTRA Museum Complex – in Dumbrava Sibiului,  and the Folk Architecture Museum in Gorj – Curtișoara.

Image Archive:

> houses and households from the ​​Gorj and Maramureș areas, stock film photography, digital photography, Alexandru Crișan, photographed at the ASTRA Museum Complex in the open air – from Dumbrava Sibiului, Sibiu, 2017-2024;

> houses and households from the Gorj area, stock film photography, digital photography, Alexandru Crișan, photographed at the Folk Architecture Museum in Gorj – Curtișoara, 2004-2016;

> image selection, traditional village fragments, (digital scan), Kurt Hielscher, RUMANIA, Leipzig, 1933;

> image selection, traditional village fragments, (digital scan), Tache Papahagi, IMAGES D’ETHNOGRAPHIE ROUMAINE, BANAT*OLTENIE,Tome Troisieme. București, 1934.

Artist Bio/CV

Alexandru Crișan – painter, photographer, architect (b. Bucharest, 1978)

Alexandru Crișan is a visual explorer, working in oil, acrylic and metal abstract techniques. He’s a fine-art photographer. He also uses a multidisciplinary approach for his art and architectural research.

He’s an active specialist in the field of visual arts, architecture and academic education, lecturer at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture in Bucharest, researcher within the Culture Reserve Association, promoting non-formal education and exploration through the visual medium, and strengthening the dialogue between tradition and innovation.

Alexandru Crișan’s works have been presented in over a dozen international exhibitions, have been published in over 40 peer-reviewed magazines, have received over 450 international awards and nominations, and are part of several privately owned collections. More @ https://alexandru-crisan.com/

Links

@culturereserve: https://culturereserve.org/radacini-roots-expozitie-art-safari-bucuresti-2025/

@artsafari: https://www.artsafari.ro/en/project/roots/