Museum Exhibitions:

Calin Vasilescu & 
Genu Berlo

North American Odyssey


curator: -n+1

Art Museum Casa Simian, 

Strada Carol I 25, Râmnicu Vâlcea
SUB-SOL gallery 

Opening Tuesday, November 12, 2024
November 12, 2024 - October 7, 2025 Our collaboration—the painter Genu Berlo and the sculptor Călin Vasilescu—presented under this title, comes from the fact that both of us spent a period of time in North America. There, we were able to actively pursue our interest in artistic creation. When we speak about this experience, people inevitably ask us questions such as: Why did you come back? Did you return because your art was not successful?

We believe that everyone can answer these questions according to their own ambitions and expectations. As for us, we prefer to respond with other questions—those that arose when we first began studying the arts. This flow of questions has guided us ever since we started drawing, working with color, and reflecting on the relationship between form and color. What we have managed to do, more than anything else, is to give shape to these questions, rather than to produce clear, definitive answers—answers that could easily be packaged and sold.

What is art, really? What does painting mean today? Is it different from sculpture? Who engages with art, and why? Who benefits from artistic practice? At what moment does a simple pencil line become the living presence of a figure? When is an idea truly transformed into material form?

This is only the beginning of a much larger set of questions—a cloud of thoughts that follows every visual artist wherever they go. Each work in this exhibition represents our attempt to explore one such question more deeply, as much as our life circumstances have allowed. Because, in truth, we have never been able to focus on more than one question at a time.

Călin Vasilescu –
I approach the traditional questions of volume and color with both hesitation and childlike enthusiasm, proposing a continuation of abstract monumentality in today’s world. The volumetric prototypes presented here come from the deep impression that minimalist artists have had on me.

These forms attempt to achieve dynamism without drama, and mass without weight, while also incorporating the idea of “seed-like” potential. I think of them as seeds, seeds of future sculptures, sown in the spring and harvested in the autumn.

I cannot help but notice the femininity of my works in relation to Genu’s. Although they take on a testicular form, my sculptures dream of a future release or fruition. Genu, on the other hand, offers something like an obstetric and gynecological declaration of the embodiment of the most masculine metaphysical ideals, his painting emerging from intense processes of “galvanizing” and “vulcanizing” color.

Genu Berlo –
I agree, to some extent, with what Călin says, because one of my driving motivations in these paintings is the desire to express the kinds of entities I encountered while studying Mathematics at the University of Bucharest. Even then, their properties revealed to me a reality far more expansive than the one shaped by social convention.

I paint in order to give aesthetic form to these entities, which I experience as both graceful and powerful. My practice could be described as a kind of magico-erotic ritual, an invocation of a beauty that goes beyond the everyday utility of geometry.

This fascination is not limited to the forms of geometric or trigonometric objects, but extends to their dynamics and interactions. I search for simple compositional formulas, one, two, or more colored surfaces, held together by almost accidental geometric intersections, more playful than analytical, more intuitive than interpretive.

For me, the canvas and its edges function as a module that can extend infinitely. While painting, I feel the need for contrast, whether in color or in principle: sensuality layered over logical theorems, humor framed by rigor, pleasure placed alongside structure. Ultimately, I aim for an intuitive resolution through color and material presence.