The Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, cultural public institution that functions under the authority of the Cluj County Council, invite you on Thursday, April 20th 2023, from 5 p.m., to the opening of the “Sun Fire” exhibition by Cluj artist Claudiu Presecan.
The exhibition includes the artist’s most recent cycle of paintings. After some of these paintings travelled to Strasbourg, where they were exhibited for the French public, they are now brought together in a comprehensive and complex exhibition, including new works exposed for the first time, among which the Genesis series of six paintings dedicated to each Creation day.
Each painting of this “Sun Fire” represents a spiritual and personal search for the uncreated, primordial light, for the natural beauty found in Transylvania’s mountains, for the Lost Paradise.
The intense and expressive tints, in an explosive chromatic, create a plastic path in search for the Light. The paintings thus vibrate and “live”, referring to the work of the Great Creator. What appears as a vision too-full of colour and pure exuberance reveals itself to art and beauty lovers in full meaning and deep symbols.
***
Author’s thoughts on the exhibition
After more than 25 years of artistic effort, the experiences and ideas of the 90’s return to my imagination generated by the silence and short “break” offered by the Covid pandemic. These last years have made me perceive life in a different way, and implicitly the priceless gifts given to us by the Great Creator. These gifts are, among others, spirit and time.
Driven by curiosity and interest, I allowed myself be inspired by the Old and New Testament themes and thus painted the Genesis, Adam and Eve, Jacob’s Ladder, Vine Leafs, now, with different eyes, perhaps more inclined towards the natural beauty than the experimental one, I reinterpret in my mind ideas such as the Genesis, the Creation, our call to the Light. Are we able to be participants in this toil?
I generically entitled this last cycle dedicated to the Light as “Sun Fire”, because the sun has coloured my palette and inspired my thought through the multitude of created moods. Most of my works have as model the landscape of the Apuseni Mountains, corners of Heaven, a heaven to which I have attributed elements of Genesis, in my vision.
For me, art must resonate in the viewer’s soul, to excite, it is the bridge that connects us to our Creator, to the beauty in us.
How much depth in the poet’s words: “Without “I” there is no God, without eyes there is no light, without hearing there is no song. The eye is the light, hearing is the song, “I” is God. My nation is the world.” (Mihai Eminescu)
Claudiu Presecan – April 2023
More details about the artist’s creation and exhibition record are available at: www.claudiupresecan.com.
The exhibition will be presented at the opening by Mr. Ovidiu Pecican and it will be open from 20 April - 15 May 2023, from Wednesday - Sunday, from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., last entry at 5 p.m.