User:Moon Nala/sandbox

= Roman Tolici =

Roman Tolici (born 1974 in Ghetlova, Republic of Moldova) is a Romanian contemporary artist. He lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. He is associated with a photographic realism infused by poetry and a surreal sense of everyday existence. His paintings seem to be details of a monumental story related to the general human questions and anxieties. This narrative force turns the recurrent subjects into never-ending chapters and the reflections of everyday life into projections about time, memory and traces captured by the artist's tender perception.

Tolici is most well known in Central and Eastern Europe for his distinctive combination of realism and surrealism – depictions of everyday situations infused by the dark, menacing, apocalyptic or simply odd. Tolici dares to foray into all aesthetic currents. On these paths, he creates an ironic and, sometimes, diabolic game. He interposes a series of interfaces between reality and us; therefore, art is an insurrection against reality, against its monopolist pretensions, a way of getting free from its averring omnipresence. At this point, the audiences are enveloped in a stage of pleasure. They wander through this superposition of eras, of spaces, and fail to recognize the usual framework; they feel lost, and at the same time, on familiar grounds.

Early life
He started studying arts at the Igor Vieru Arts School in Chișinău, but his interest for images and for the visual culture had been nourished from his very first years of life, by his family. He moves to Bucharest in 1990, after receiving a scholarship at the Nicolae Tonitza Arts Highschool from the Romanian state.

In 1997 he defends his BA thesis in a public exhibition (organised in the Constantin Brâncuși Hall of the Palace of the Parliament); his BA thesis, entitled Identities and supervised by Nistor Coita, concludes his studies and the Graphic Arts Department of the National University of Arts of Bucharest. At the end of the '90s, Tolici tries his hand in literature, graphics and animation, cartoons and photography.

Starting with 2000, he establishes himself as a painter, with personal and group exhibitions. He starts working with Oana Tănase (arts historian and independent curator); the collaboration is materialized in the personal exhibitions "1 plus 1" (together with Dumitru Holban) hosted by the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest.

Work
Roman Tolici's works come in different sizes and formats – some large, some small; some vertical, some horizontal; one can even hang at a diagonal. There is humour, irony, hope, hopelessness, magnificent painting and neo-Vorticist spatial awareness. Some canvases are busy, others almost empty. The underlying message? You tell me. Each work creates a world of its own. These paintings exist to be absorbed. (Simion Hewitt, curator)

In Exitus series
DEATH IS AND REMAINS A MYSTERY, not only to me, but to the entire mankind. It is the only subject we know nothing about. Ever since we are born, we start heading towards this exit, and we encounter, along the way, all sort of beauties that help us understand why death is so majestically tragic. In Exitus was the first series placed under the umbrella of a single subject, namely Death, treated in parallel with an equally sublime element - the sky. I remember that, while I was working on the In Exitus series, the sky challanged me even more than the representation of Death. In the history of recent art, I have rarely encountered major concerns related to the sky. It is equally beautiful and continuously changing. Moreover, we are so used to its presence, that its visual mark is often associated to kitsch; in In Exitus, I tried to take on this taboo as well, together with the one related to Death. (Roman Tolici, 2016)

Park series
IN ORDER TO REITERATE AND ALSO GIVE COLOUR to the complicitous relationship my painting maintains with the source photography, we can take the example of the Park series (2007). I've been often asked how exactly the connection between landscape and nation - key-terms in this series of paintings - was established. Well, in Park, I had what we often call a revelation. As it happens with most things, I discovered the code behind the relationship between a "built" landscape and a "given" nation by chance. The scene was captured on the 4th of July, while looking from the windows of my home on the 5th floor: people were playing table tennis, talking and drinking beer. At first sight, nothing unusual, only an impulse to celebrate the national day of a foreign country that you dream of, to get closer somehow to the main ideas of a certain type of freedom, its flag included. In brief, what I had in front of my eyes was an image in which all that was not American could become such, an everyday scene transformed through the mirror of an event. The Park series continued with France, China and Holland.. because once I discovered this possibility I began observing with different eyes other scenes and landscapes I came across, and even old photographs. My interest has to do less with the " portraying " of a country and more with our perception of it.. the way its landscape looks, the human behaviour, its atmospheric states. (Roman Tolici, 2008)

Nobody series
Tolici makes the audience hesitate: is this a photograph, or a painting? A painting that imitates photography, or a retouched photograph? These women, so sensual, who, in the Nobody series, walk seen from behind, with their long legs, wearing skirts or trousers, will they ever indulge us and turn their face to us, or they will remain forever mysterious silhouettes?

The Gospel According to Santa Claus series
He plays with styles; he juggles with all the unlimited possibilities provided by technologies, instruments and supports. Even when he mocks the Santa Claus myth, baby Jesus is represented as a plush bunny, a nod to the Playboy bunny.

Exhibitions
Some of Tolici's personal exhibitions were included in many curatorial (and editorial) projects of Oana Tănase: Grafik und Malerei, Ross + Ross Galerie, Stuttgart, Germany, 2011; Nobody, Jecza Gallery, Timișoara, Romania, 2011; Action, Virtuell-Visuell, Dorsten, Germany, 2010; It Could Happen Tomorrow, National Museum of Contemporary Arts, Bucharest, Romania, 2008

Some of the most recest personal exhibitions of Roman Tolici include: Journey (curated by Yana Smurova), Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2016; SIMVLACRVM (curated by Simon Hewitt), Mobius Gallery, Bucharest, Romania, 2015; ''Milk. Honey. Blood (curated by Adina Zorzini), Stirbey Palace, Bucharest, Romania; Ceremonies (curated by Adina Zorzini), National Museum of Arts, Chișinău, Republic of Moldova; Senki'' (curated by Oana Tănase), Herman Otto Museum, Miskolc, Hungary.

Throughout the years, the works of Roman Tolici have been included in group exhibitions hosted by independent galleries and museums in Sibiu, Vienna, Graz, Frankfurt, Tallin, Brussels, San Francisco and New York.

It Could Happen Tomorrow
It Could Happen Tomorrow selects works from distinct series – Park, Barber’s Shop and Action (painting and drawing) – to make visible both the artist’s particular approach and his recurring themes. Far from the formula of a retrospective exhibition, the curator’s intention is to decant ethical principles that guide Roman Tolici in his workshop. The complicit relationship that his painting has with photography indicates a contemplative way of looking at the world: the artist portrays re-evaluations of private and collective history, wanderings, illusory promises.