My current theme revolves around the philosophical idea of the garden and the utopian human attempt to control nature -
a space of tension between two major forces of creation: the creator and his creation become in turn creators.
This never-ending back-and-forth cycle between creator and creation as creator is a recurrent theme in my artistic works,
as well as of nowadays questionings about artificial intelligence and its direction.
My art is characterized by a painting that questions the constitutive matrix of reality by way of an analysis of memory and details a kind of painting that surfaces the anxieties of existence and the human desire to outlive and a testimonial to the remains that archaeology has given to us.
Andrei Ciurdărescu (born. in 1984, in Orastie, Romania) graduated from the University of Art & Design Cluj-Napoca and obtained a Ph.D. degree in visual arts in 2014; in 2015 he received a scholarship to the Romanian Academy in Rome, Italy (where he lived and worked for a year) and shortly after that, started working as a university lecturer at the Department of Painting of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Art & Design - Cluj-Napoca.
Among his many exhibitions, we should highlight: Herbarium @ N Space - Koloniewedding, Berlin, DE (2021); (Collective) JCE - Jeunne Creation Europeene Biennale @ Centrul de Interes Contemporary Art Center, Cluj-Napoca, RO / Villa Olmo, Como, IT (2020)/ official opening at The Belfry - Montrouge, Paris, FR (2019); (Collective) Il faut cultiver notre jardin @ Center of Interest, Cluj-Napoca, RO (2019); (Collective) SHOW-OFF 2 @ MATCA Art Space, Cluj-Napoca, RO (2019); (Collective) Changing places - Térfélcsere @ ICA-D Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, HU (2019); (Personal) Four points of enclosure @ MATCA Art Space, Cluj-Napoca, RO (2018); (Collective) The School of Cluj - Painting & Graphic Arts @ Neon Gallery, Wroclaw, PL(2017); (Personal) Me in the garden @ Boccanera Project Room, Trento, IT (2016); (Collective) 4Spaces - Common Ground @ the ICR - Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice, IT (2016), (Personal) Giardini splendore - belleza ferita & Neomappa Roma @ the Accademia di Romania in Rome, Rome, IT (2015); (Personal) La Realta di Venere I & II, Borgo Medievale, Otranto, IT and at ICR - Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice, IT (2015); (Collective) Luc Tuymans in dialogue with Călin Dan @ Spatiul Intact - Cultural Foundation, Fabrica de Pensule (Paintbrush Factory), Cluj–Napoca, RO (2014); (Collective) Vanguardias y periferias @ LaNeomudejar, Madrid, ES (2014). He lives and work in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
visual artist
Born on 19 December 1984, in Orastie, Romania.
2003 – HSD ”Sigismund Toduta” Music and Fine Arts Highschool, Deva,RO;
2007 – BA Degree in panting at University of Art & Design - Cluj-Napoca,RO;
2009 – MA Degree in painting at University of Art & Design - Cluj-Napoca,RO;
2014 - Ph.D. in Visual Arts at University of Art & Design - Cluj-Napoca,RO;
2015 – Present - University Lecturer in the Painting Department
of the Faculty of Fine Art at University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca,RO.
The garden is in Andrei Ciurdărescu’s philosophical works the perfect materialization of the utopic idea of human control over nature, a space of tension between two major forces of creation: the creator and his creation become in its turn creator. This never-ending back-and-forth cycle between creator and creation as creator is a recurrent theme of Andrei Ciurdărescu’s artistic works, as well as of nowadays questions about artificial intelligence.
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Profoundly and personally attached to the idea of ground/earth as distinctive genetic human aspect, Ciurdărescu organizes his paintings as a baroque scenographer, in grandiose, sensuous rich, dramatic, full of vitality, moving, tense and emotional exuberant scenes in intense light and dark shadows.
The connection to Mother Gaea is expressed by elements of a sensual tactile pictorial language: rocks, majestic delicate white lilies, the illustrious carnal agave, the apparent pristine neoromantic wilderness or through elements that imaginatively compose the scene: sounds, the smell of noble lilies, the hot summer air, the night coldness.
To all these botanical elements belonging to nature, Andrei adds the statue of Venus as an iconic element of the urban anthropic landscape. Venus is the mythological deity of beauty, sensuality but also of war and magic. No surprise that the painter adds statues of famous Roman emperors to express power and balance. This pictorial rendition disguises a poetic undercurrent of the symbolic polysemantic character: an archeological quest to discover and reveal the symbolic base of the European culture and civilization.
Yet, the statues of once perfectly beautiful Venus are now hideous, broken and invaded by and almost prisoner of the spontaneous nature. A monumental civilization is under the monumental force of the rebel nature. Creation becomes creator.
The broken remains and debris of the ancient days recollects reflections of a utopic past and reveals the true nature of the present and an urgent need of a philosophical reconstruction of values, icons and life.Diana Andrei, curator @ Art Halle Gallery - Icons of Utopia / 2019
The art of Andrei Ciurdarescu is characterised by a painting that questions the constitutive matrices of reality by way of an analysis of memory and constitutive details. The Me in the Garden project presents intense figurative painting that analyse the constructive/destructive interactions between anthropic elements and nature in gardens: a metaphor for the conflict between opposed social, economic, political, and anthropological trends.
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The show examines the proscribed space in which botany, aesthetics, and natural spontaneity collide and continuously adapt to each other. For Ciurdarescu, what is decided by the context, the limitations imposed by the location, the climatic and meteorological variables, and also the visual taste and culture of those who cultivate and tend gardens, are the triggers for an intense dialogue between different kinds of brutality: the voluntary and authoritarian one sparked off by humanity, and the random and necessary one determined by nature itself.
With a carnal and tactile painting, the artist in fact reveals the marks of the conflicts and insults that the passing of time has inflicted on both aspects. Grass grows and agaves, with their pointed leaves, lushly proliferate, lapping the stone paths, the crumbling ancient sculptures, and the boxwood hedges, all modelled with the firm hand of a lover of ars topiaria. Among the prickly pears painted by the artist, however, there crop up heads of divinities and philosophers, the busts of Roman emperors, even more sensual in the lustful abandonment caused by time: the seemingly incorruptible icons of an ancient and all-too-human world that fights in order not to die completely, not to be swallowed by history. Beauty, however, symbolised in some of the paintings by the presence of a sensual Venus, is only a fragmented prisoner of the past, a shred that is unable to oppose the power of change.
Ciurdarescu’s is a philosophical kind of painting that shows the anxieties of existence and the human desire to outlive ourselves, testified to by the remains that archaeology has given to us. And it is also a warning not to overestimate the constructive strength of our acts, not to endlessly trust in those of our actions that are aimed at glory.Daniele Capra, art critic & independent curator - Io nel giardino @ Boccanera Gallery / 2016
The Io nel giardino project examines the proscribed space in which botany, aesthetics, and natural spontaneity collide and continuously adapt to each other. For Andrei Ciurdarescu, what is decided by the context, the limitations imposed by the location, the climatic and meteorological variables, and also the visual taste and culture of those who cultivate and tend gardens, are the triggers ...for an intense dialogue between different kinds of brutality: the voluntary and authoritarian one sparked off by humanity, and the random and necessary one determined by nature itself.
With a carnal and tactile painting, the artist in fact reveals the marks of the conflicts and insults that the passing of time has inflicted on both aspects. Grass grows and agaves, with their pointed leaves, lushly proliferate, lapping the stone paths, the crumbling ancient sculptures, and the boxwood hedges, all modelled with the firm hand of a lover of ars topiaria.
Among the prickly pears painted by the artist, however, there crop up heads of divinities and philosophers, the busts of Roman emperors, even more sensual in the lustful abandonment caused by time: the seemingly incorruptible icons of an ancient and all-too-human world that fights in order not to die completely, not to be swallowed by history. Beauty, however, symbolised in some of the paintings by the presence of a sensual Venus, is only a fragmented prisoner of the past, a shred that is unable to oppose the power of change.
Ciurdarescu’s art is a philosophical kind of painting that shows the anxieties of existence and the human desire to outlive ourselves, testified to by the remains that archaeology has given to us. And it is also a warning not to overestimate the constructive strength of our acts, not to endlessly trust in those of our actions that are aimed at glory.Giorgia Lucchi Boccanera, gallery owner and manager @ Boccanera Gallery - Io nel giardino / 2016