Alexandru Crișan (b. Bucharest, Romania 1978) is a visual
artist interested in the existential complementarity of objective and nonobjective
forms of expression. As far as
the latter is to be unpacked, his “counter-professional” career in photography began in 2008; his paintings stand,
for almost three decades, as the most intimate, borderline atavistic, acts of divulgence.
Assuming that taxonomy is of any consequence, he is partial to fine-art photography and Abstract Expressionism. The eclectic nature of his projects is,
therefore, a given.
When it comes to the acrylic heart-chambers of
his work, there is an uncanny sentiment of intimacy that gradually found its
safe house within the lyrical
abstractions spectrum. In the aftermath of incipient spiritualist art etudes, transcending a surrealist period of emancipation from the confines of geometry, not
to mention a stint in the magical
realism of overpainted photographic
negatives, an obsessive chase for the “taming
of the light within the organic pool of colors” ensued. While this pursuit
found its default creative outlet within architecture, it also pushed him
towards the logic of abstract
expressionism. A decade after he found his eclectic (often nonrepresentational)
niche, the most spectacular results were the series “The Human Comedy” (acrylic Balzacian musings on intersectional dead
ends), “Discorsi” (color-coded
existentialist Q&As), and “Q” (a
chromatic synthesis triggered by anxieties and saudade). His works evolved into a symbiosis which he calls “Brutalisme
lyrique”. He describes this artistic approach as “a filiation in which
the Abstraction Lyrique is a
phenomenological motherly figure, while the nybrutalism
may claim ontological paternal custody, yet the - ultimately needed - IVF-like
metabolic praxeology is delivering the visceral coherence. To put it
differently, I now act as a painter (abstract, perhaps) and I final-cut as an
architect (deconstructivist, probably).” The “Entropy” series is the pinnacle of this process.
His photography is a direct result of
compulsive visual disquisitions on impromptu portraiture, architectural equivocations,
parametric manipulations, “hybrid storytelling” and evocative conservationism.
Most of his long-term, open-ended photographic series - such as "Minimal White / Minimal Black", or
"Lost Highway / My Car is Your Avatar" - are
meditations on loci and human
perceptions. The research on and within photography gradually afforded him a
surreal vision of immateriality, which he debonairly likes to describe as “tormenting several stages of a hyperrealist
mise en abyme”. Since 2015, he developed quite a few “meta-projects”: “Erotoarchitecture”, “Metropoesis”, “Hortus Conclusus”, “Alex Transcends
the Balkans for a Bottle of Perfume”, “Mechaniarchy”
and “Shoah”, under the compelling
awareness and besetting exploration of otherness
and of self.
Crișan's works have been presented in over a
dozen international exhibitions, have been published in over 40 peer-reviewed
magazines, have received over 400 international awards and nominations, and are
part of several privately owned collections and art galleries.
More on: https://alexandru-crisan.com/
