Sector 1, Bucarest
Arantxa Etcheverria, Norbert Filep, Gyarfas Olah et Lucia Popăilă
Sector 1 Gallery’s project is the visual conversation between 4 artistic directions, through the works of Arantxa Etchverria, Norbert Filep, Olah Gyarfas and Lucian Popăilă.
The setup presents ideas communicating through formal and conceptual behaviours strongly linked with the surroundings of an East-European culture. While Etcheverria and Filep are seemingly connected through modernist elements seeking to innovate and broaden different perspectives from that period of time, the works of Olah and Popăilă have a behaviour that tends to recall aspects of a forgotten world where craftmanship and myths are at the core of the practice. This dichotomy creates a dialogue where different concepts linked to distinctive cultural periods seek a deeper understanding contrasting to our hyper-accelerated society.
Arantxa Etcheveria has developed an artistic practice related to the modernist architecture of a forgotten Bucharest, reminding of the Bauhaus style and creating works that mesmerize through their elegant aesthetics.
In a not so opposite manner Norbert Filep uses the formal language of op-art to reflect on interoperability between form, colour and language, through the subtle aesthetics of pure abstraction. He recreates the colour spectre visible to the human eye by using each scaled-up frequency length and constructing different conceptual-monochrome drawings.
Lucian Popăilă’s works recall a world suspended in time, where craftmanship and the contemplation of what the act of painting should be is defined by the simplicity of the brushstroke gesture mixed with the speed of fresco painting, recalling a mysterious beauty born in ancient worlds.
Seeking to create new earth-like materials growing out of different geographical regions, the works of Olah Gyarfas are embodiments of sacred or paradoxical fantasies linked to the Earth itself working almost like a material and spiritual recycling.
