Jecza&Ross Gallery presents at The Solo Project 2011in Basel a project which is a sort of curatorial “remix” that brings together two artists from different generations. The first one, Paul Neagu, is an artist who puts Timisoara on the map as far as contemporary practices are concerned: experimental photography, video art, performance, body art, sculpture and painting – which became the main media between 1965 and 1980, thanks to groups such as 1.1.1. and Sigma. The project aims to present the way in which the artistic paradigm and this artist’ influence has been transmitted to the young generation in the abstract-conceptual area. The artist of this trend, represented at the fair by Jecza & Ross Gallery is Cătălin Petrişor.

Paul Neagu (1938- 2004) is a significant personality of the new European artistic avant-garde. He has influenced a whole generation of British artists, such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Tony Cragg. His work is present in public collections, such as the Tate Gallery, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest and the Museum for Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

“The underlying complexity of Paul Neagu’s conceptions highlights a whole theoretical system, supported visually, which contains several layers structured hierarchically. All of the artist’s forms of expression are integrated within this system, coming together as a coherent whole. His ideas, as employed in constantly renewing artistic types – object, installation, performance, drawing, sculpting – portray a scrutinizing and restless soul. Paul Neagu’s “catalytic” sculptures flow from his principles of regenerative art, in which the hierarchy of signs and their implicit meanings correspond to the hierarchy of quality of substances. The first piece of work in this series is entitled Hyphen and is a Generator, an object in its highest symbolic state, for which there are no pre-existing formal models. The artist was inspired at the beginning by the contesting spirit of Marcel Duchamp, but his entire theoretical system, as well as his cathartic sculptures, are situated in the posterity of Brancusi.” (Ileana Pintilie, art critic / curator)

Cătălin Petrişor (1978) is a figurative artist interested mainly by the intertwining of dimensions and the illusion of space: “I am interested in the illusionist space: the situation in which, with the help of the most discreet interventions, one can alter a form to the point of creating a new dimension.” The artist is fascinated by the overlapping of distinct realities, of different techniques of defying conventions of classical monochrome painting: “One of my practice essentials is to overlap contour drawings made in graphite on finished paintings. It is a form of vandalism directed at my own authority, presenting the multidimensionality of this world and pointing out that there are several possible directions, that things are not unambiguous or dual, but have many faces.”