Gallery13

The Sacred as Memory of the Human Face
Victoria Țăroi – Decebal Țăroi
Gorj County Museum “Alexandru Ștefulescu”, Târgu Jiu
Within the spaces of the Gorj County Museum “Alexandru Ștefulescu” in Târgu Jiu, the exhibition “Visual Sacralities” proposes a carefully articulated artistic dialogue between the paintings of Victoria Țăroi and the sculptures of Decebal Țăroi, shaped with both lucidity and sensitivity.
The exhibition establishes, from the very beginning, an atmosphere of silence and introspection. The sobriety of the museum space and the carefully measured rhythm of the display allow the works to breathe and to construct a coherent visual journey in which painting and sculpture complement one another without entering into visual competition. Everything is organized according to a logic of balance and dialogue.
Victoria Țăroi’s painting develops a universe of sacred femininity situated at the border between icon, memory, and symbol. The frontal, almost hieratic faces preserve the calmness of ritual representation; yet beyond this apparent serenity, one senses a deeply human tension. Each figure seems extracted from a collective memory, carrying within itself fragments of sacred architecture, traditional decorative motifs, and traces of a discreet spirituality.
The dominant blue within the compositions functions not merely as a chromatic choice, but as an opening toward meditation, creating the impression of an image suspended between appearance and disappearance. Delicate drawing, transparent overlays, and graphic interventions transform the pictorial surface into a space where memory slowly settles and accumulates. At times, the female figure merges with the structure of a church; elsewhere, the halo becomes a geometric, almost architectural element. Here, the sacred is filtered through a contemporary sensibility, free from theatricality and symbolic excess.
In counterpoint, Decebal Țăroi’s sculpture introduces raw matter and the archetypal expression of form. His works resemble relics recovered from an imaginary civilization or fragments of ancestral memory. Fragmented heads, masks, vertical structures, and totemic objects convey a grave, almost ritual force. The artist deliberately preserves fissures, cracks, and traces of modeling, embracing the fragility of matter as an essential component of visual expression.
Particularly striking are the sculptures in which the human face becomes a modular structure or a collective sign. The multiplication of gazes, the fragmentation of anatomy, and the geometrization of volumes create the sensation of an identity permanently suspended between construction and ruin. In other works, matter seems to retain the energy of the initial gesture, as though the objects were not definitively completed, but captured within an ongoing process of transformation.
The dialogue between the two artists is constructed precisely through this complementarity. While Victoria Țăroi’s painting proposes a spiritualization of the image and a poetics of interiority, Decebal Țăroi’s sculpture introduces the concrete dimension of material memory, trace, and relic. In both artistic directions, however, the human figure remains the central axis of reflection. The face becomes a symbolic space, a site of memory, and the bearer of a tension between the sacred and the fragility of existence.
“Visual Sacralities” deliberately avoids spectacular effects, favoring instead symbolic density and visual meditation. It is precisely this restraint that grants the exhibition its authenticity and strength. This is not an exhibition that explains the sacred, but one that suggests it through atmosphere, matter, and silence.
Through the coherence of its artistic discourse and the maturity of its visual language, the project realized by Victoria Țăroi and Decebal Țăroi confirms an important direction within contemporary Romanian art: the recovery of the spiritual dimension of the image without rhetoric or gratuitous ornamentation. Within the space of the Gorj County Museum “Alexandru Ștefulescu”, this encounter between painting and sculpture becomes a coherent discourse on memory, fragility, and the persistence of the sacred within contemporary sensibility.

At the National Museum “Constantin Brâncuși”, Muzele treze (Awakened Muses), the exhibition by Eva Andrea Szőcs, unfolds as a coherent visual journey articulated through purified forms, subtle visual tensions, and a carefully calibrated relationship between object, space, and viewer.
From the outset, the exhibition avoids the rhetoric of spectacle, favoring instead a restrained, almost confessional visual language. The ceramic heads placed upon white pillows inhabit the gallery space like suspended presences existing within an uncertain temporality. The repetition of forms establishes rhythm and evokes the atmosphere of a silent ritual in which each work appears to preserve the traces of an intimate experience. The pillow — an object associated with rest and intimacy — becomes a symbolic support for human vulnerability.
The modeling of the heads is striking in its economy of expression. The artist abandons descriptive detail in favor of essentialized volumes, where the gaze and the subtle contour of the face condense the emotional tension of the work. Matte, slightly imperfect surfaces preserve the immediacy of the artistic gesture and lend the pieces a profoundly human dimension. These forms do not seek idealization, but rather explore introspection and precarious balance.
In counterpoint, the series of female sculptures introduces the theme of the body exposed to the social gaze. The white figurines, positioned on tall pedestals, possess a presence that is simultaneously theatrical and vulnerable. Their poses — at times defensive, at times seemingly relaxed — suggest a continuous negotiation between appearance and inner discomfort. The contrast between the glossy whiteness of the sculptures and the dark background intensifies the isolation of each figure, transforming every piece into a small theater of identity.
The texts inserted onto the pedestals function as fragments of dialogue retrieved from everyday life: seemingly banal remarks charged with irony and social tension. “What have you put on again?!” or “I had never worn so much lipstick as I did then…” do not merely accompany the sculptures, but open a psychological and cultural register connected to image, femininity, and the pressure of self-representation.
One of the exhibition’s most compelling presences is the fragmented head, violently fissured and marked by a minimal yet visually decisive red intervention. The work condenses the project’s dramatic energy without resorting to excessive effects. The rupture becomes the sign of an inner tension, while the material itself appears to retain the traces of an extreme experience.
The two-dimensional interventions further expand the exhibition’s discourse through an aesthetic of fragmentation and layering. The silhouettes trapped between cut surfaces evoke bodies suspended within an unstable space, between emergence and withdrawal. These compositions introduce an almost cinematic dimension, constructed through sequence, rhythm, and suspension.
The strength of Muzele treze resides precisely in the restraint of its formal means. Eva Andrea Szőcs does not rely on monumentality or immediate visual impact, but rather on the slow construction of a dense atmosphere charged with emotional tension. Each work functions as a nucleus of introspection, while the project as a whole acquires the coherence of a meditation on the human condition, corporeality, and contemporary solitude.
Through the clarity of its visual discourse and the maturity of the relationship between concept and form, Muzele treze emerges as a sensitive and carefully articulated artistic project, capable of transforming the delicacy of the artistic gesture into a profound experience of contemplation.

At the Iron Gates Region Museum in Drobeta-Turnu Severin, a major visual arts exhibition has opened, conceived as a space of convergence for distinct artistic idioms and sensibilities which, while differing in structure and expression, together articulate the image of a vital and fertile contemporary visual scene. Bringing together a significant number of artists, the exhibition offers the public an experience of plurality, in which diverse visual languages coexist within an open dialogue sustained by the productive tension between individual artistic identity and collective presence.
Curated by Daniel Marius CEPEȘI, the exhibition brings together works by Bogdan BADEA, Cătălin BARBU, Natalia BOCEANU, Georgiana BRANDT, Costin BRĂTEANU, Daniel Marius CEPEȘI, Andrei COPTIL, Vasile DĂNILĂ, Marin DIACONU, Dorel DINIȘOARĂ, Suzana FÂNTÂNARIU, Victor GINGIU, Ionuț GURGUI, Ofelia HUȚUL, Minodora IANĂȘI, Cătălin IRIZA, Victor LALU, Ana-Maria MATEI, Daniel MATEI, Larisa MUTU-MINDOIU, Gheorghe MOSORESCU, Angela MUSTĂCILĂ, Valer NEAG, Teodor NEGOIȚĂ, Cecilia PLĂVIȚU, Florin-Alexandru PREDA (PAF), Florin PREDA-DOCHINOIU, Gabriel RADOVICI, Raluca RADOVICI, Remus ROTARU, Dan SCURTU, Nicoleta TROANCĂ, Arminio ȚUINEAC, Cornel VANĂ and Gabriel VĂCUȚĂ, thus shaping an exhibition trajectory in which figuration, abstraction, the discipline of drawing, chromatic resonance, and the dynamics of material presence unfold across multiple expressive registers.
What lends this exhibition its particular coherence is not simply the breadth of participation, but its capacity to transform plurality into a visually and conceptually compelling whole. Each artist affirms a distinct plastic identity, yet together these presences construct an ensemble that speaks to the vitality of contemporary artistic practice, to the image’s capacity to generate reflection, and to the exhibition space as a site of encounter between the work and the viewer.
The exhibition will remain open to the public until mid-May.

https://www.arte.tv/ro/videos/115033-000-A/brancu-i-sculptorul-modernita-ii/?fbclid=IwVERDUAQx0bxleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqy7aOHzKmXNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHkXMnAGYtlrqJGFpGwamg5_jmJrLZIiMkeeUS1CRH0tsccCjGK2IrvTsQKQW_aem_RT-i7ppGPtk_B7haLUUcrQ&utm_source=meta&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=brancusi&utm_term=120241228992290761&utm_content=120241228992270761&utm_id=120230517411920761

Brâncuși: sculptorul modernității - Vizionează întregul documentar | ARTE Constantin Brâncuși este considerat părintele sculpturii moderne, iar atelierul său era o operă de artă în sine, care îi fascina pe contemporanii săi și simboliza cel mai bine căutarea sa după „esența lucrurilor”. Documentarul ne poartă pe urmele artistului, dezvăluind sursele sal...