The Art Pledge
Portrait of Marius Bercea

Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly. Photo: Raluca Ciornea.

Marius Bercea

Born in
1979
From
Cluj, Romania
Lives and works
Cluj, Romania
Represented by
François Ghebaly
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_Bercea

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I believe in Alberti’s space model, which is that of painting as “a window onto the world”, producing as a consequence a space with multiple entries, multiple access points, although apparently sharply limited, which eventually becomes a geographical-philosophical paradox.

Biography

Whether portraying the lonesome Romanian youth, ill-defined landscapes and post-soviet urban architectures, Marius Bercea’s paintings situate themselves at the crossroads of abstraction and figurative art. Playing and mixing a color palette that is at once vibrant and cold, his body of work is widely considered as representative of the Cluj School of Painting. 


Bercea’s intimate depictions of young adults at leisure recalls David Hokney’s portraits of friends in interiors and unsurprisingly, they both use photography as a major source of inspiration. But where Hockney’s scenes are rigid and geometrical, Bercea’s are blurry and fleeting, alluding to memory’s faulty nature. Tinged with humor, Bercea’s paintings manifest something of a nostalgia for a bygone era and its ideals. 


The artist’s use of color is also analogous to the expressionist line, particularly that of Edvard Munch. Bercea’s painterly depictions heighten the two dimensionality of the canvas taking further the modernist teachings. 


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