Gavril Zmicală: Guardians at Galateea Contemporary Art, Bucharest, 2021
Gavril Zmicală: Guardians is on view at Galateea Contemporary Art, Bucharest
November 11 – December 10, 2021
„Guardians Exhibition presents a series of twelve characters that belong to a contemporary story related to the mystery of fear and death. The guardians are symbolic representations which have an extremely important role in guarding the great mystery of the existence, of the life passage and of returning in Mother Gaia’s womb. Through tearing the fistful of earth from her own body, emotion-enriched and full of the life’s turbulences, human beings are now numbers and figures in the statistics of the Great Garden having the terrified kindred of alterability.” – Gavril Zmicală
Zmicală remains a portraitist, therefore a realist but he reverts to a certain extent the Brîncusian experience of progressive reduction, without taking the step further towards abstract forms and without paying any price to his great forerunner: the specific facies together with the surprise-combinations are certainly the artist’s identity mark. …All of Zmicală’s characters wear, in fragile balances, objects on their heads, red circles, glass recipients, sticks that could be rods or snakes or who-can-know-what: combinatorial spontaneities with potential of symbolic signifiance, but also with a meaning of playful infusions that undermine the great meanings, the „high” references, necessarily „occult”.
As I said: an admirable ceramic artist, refined fantasy portraitist.
Ion Bogdan Lefter
Gavril Zmicală graduated in 1989 from the Academy of Visual Arts Ioan Andreescu, Cluj-Napoca. Since 2013 he is one of the organizers of the Cluj International Ceramics Biennale. His exhibition record includes personal exhibitions in Austria, Holland, Germany and Romania. He attended many group exhibitions in Germany, Japan and Romania. He is currently the Head of the „Romulus Ladea” Art College from Cluj, Romania.
Exhibition curated by Lucia Lobont.
Contact
office@galateeagallery.com
Galateea Gallery
132 Calea Victoriei
Sector 1, 010094
Bucharest, Romania
