Marian Gheorghe

Retroactive Design


2022 June 6 - June 17, Bucharest

invited Mihai Pâlșu
 Vimana is pleased to announce Retroactive Design by Marian Gheorghe, an exhibition built around cryptic repurposing in decoration.
On his time travels, Marian Gheorghe combines scavenged industrial objects with actual technology, giving them a new life as contemporary artifacts.  Invested with charm and a sense of humor, made from bronze, nickel, wood and light bulbs, functionally they are lamps, light generators. However, you can hardly take them simply as ambiently and complementary, but rather they play a much better role as room subjects, each of them being unique and unrepeatable, giving the interior a sense of theatrical.
-n+1 group Marian Gheorghe (born 1957, Ateliere Drobeta Turnu Severin) is a visual artist specializing in sculpture and metalwork. He graduated from the Academy of Art in Bucharest, Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design, metal section, in 1994. Between 2006–2007 he served as Vice President of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania, and in 2006 coordinated the Union's National Art Salon. In 2000 he received the Prize for the Arts of Fire from the Union of Visual Artists of Romania.

His exhibition record spans solo shows at Galeria Caminul Artei and Galeriile Orizont in Bucharest, and group participations including the Essen Art Fair (2015) and the Decorative Arts Biennale in Bucharest,

He is described by critics as a discreet figure — perhaps too knowing in matters of art to seek visibility for its own sake. His works are characterized as large-scale goldsmithing objects, meticulous surrealist jokes, marked by a knowing peace and occasional jovial weariness.

A 2017 exhibition at Galeria Orizont, e-vaporatus / volumetrie permisivă, paired him with sculptor Călin Vasilescu. Critic Constantin Hostiuc described the show as a dialogue about the spirit awaiting wood — a double discourse on the geometric rational wrapped in soft, vibrated, striated or smooth form, from which meanings and purposes emerge.