In a text about the show Razvan Anton (Romanian artist) writes:
“Already made” is a journey through a personal history of art. Recollecting important names from the history of painting Oana Farcas is making her own statement towards an intimate narrative of artistic references. This journey is not a survey of academic distance, but rather a personal and subjective reaction to a world of endless critical paradigms. If Duchamp proposed the paradigm of art as anti-art, Oana Farcas is returning to a previous, already proved paradigm, of the art as art, inside the borders of figurative painting.
Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud are her own interlocutors in deciphering the place of painting in our modern lives. Her project is more of an investigation of the role of the artist in today’s world, questioning concepts like form and subject in an environment dominated by market and media. The discovery of the new is related to a reinterpretation of painting rather than to its refusal. Painting is for her a diary of daily questions and ideas, a testing ground and a metaphorical mirror of the world.
Oana’s statement is a manifesto towards a return to the vitality of painting and the joy of the artist in discovering essential images. The artistic dialogue created with these iconic figures of modern art is a reassurance of the artist’s autonomy towards an ethical approach. This return to the medium of painting is a statement about the possibilities of the image and our relationship with the realm of images.
From “Oana Farcas: Between the Visible and the Invisible by Jane Neal”
At the heart of Farcas’ practice is portraiture. Portraits of women, men and children, real and fictionalised, parade across her boards and canvases. Ranging in size from the diminutive world of the miniature, to large scale crowd scenes, Farcas’s work delivers a colourful ensemble of characters. Sometimes Farcas tends towards the fantastical, combining animals or anthropomorphic beings with her fully human figures; drawing from mythology and fairy tales, often sourced from her native Romanian heritage. Always though, it is possible to find Farcas herself in the work:
This world of Farcas’s could be described as being between the visible and invisible. What she feels and ’sees’ in her mind’s eye is combined by seen and felt experiences in reality and who is to say that one is less real than the other when both can be translated into memories, and after both are re-born and co-existent within the grounds of her paintings?
Farcas’s paintings certainly have a dream-like quality about them. But in amidst the soft, misty environs she creates, there is a tangible physicality. The figures are robust, passionate creatures awash with emotions and often depicted mid action. The notion of observing a figure who is seemingly unaware, lends a voyeuristic quality to the work.
Merleau-Ponty argued that the artist’s ability to see the world is impossible to separate from his ability to move through it. From this point it is possible to go on to therefore claim that painting is as much a felt experience as a visual one. The artist needs to feel herself in her paintings, and to make it possible for others to also find themselves in the work. Farcas knows this, which is what makes her paintings so arresting and seductive.
Oana Farcas born in 1981 in Romania, lives and works in Cluj-Napoca and New York
Education
2010
Ph.D., University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2003-2005
MA, University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
1999-2003
BA, University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Painting Department
Upcoming Exhibitions
“The Cutting Edge” Hydra School Projects, Hydra, Greece
Solo Exhibitions
2011
“Already Made” LARMgalleri, Copenhagen, Denmark
“Leurre”, Fondation Francès, Senlis, France
Volta7 Basel, LARMgalleri, Basel, Switzerland
Volta NY, LARMgalleri, New York, USA
2010
“Realism”, Casa Matei, Cluj-Napoca
2009
“Since Then/Till Now” LARMgallery, Copenhagen
2008
“Just a glimpse” IVAN Gallery , Bucharest
2007
Preview Gallery, Cluj
2006
Kunstagenten Gallery, Berlin
2004
“Confusion” ,Atas Gallery, Cluj
2003
“Play” Bulgakov Gallery, Cluj
Group Exhibitions
2011
“Con Amore” (Works from Leif Djurhuus Collection) AROS, Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark
“The Cutting Edge” Hydra School Projects, Hydra, Greece
“The Cutting Edge” Museum of Art, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
“Berlin Show #3″ Plan B Gallery, Berlin, Gemany
“New Acquisitions of the AFM Collection”, CCA Kunsthalle, Mallorca, Spain
Art Copenhagen with LARMgalleri
2010
“2 artists/2 women/ 2 visions”, Oana Farcas and Geta Bratescu, Espace Tajan, Paris
Enrages, Fondation Frances, Senlis, France
“Girls Just Want to Have Funds” (in Cooperation with Rema Hort Mann Foundation) P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, USA
“In The Eyes Of My Brother”, LARMgallery, Copenhagen
Art Copenhagen, with Larm Gallery
Art Brusseles , with Larm Gallery
Market, with Larm Gallery
2009
Fast Forward/ Romanian Painting Today, curator Maria Rus Bojan, C-Projects, Hague
Heroes and Fears, with Veres Szabolcs, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest
Prague Bienal, “Staging the Grey”, curated by Jane Neal and Mihai Pop
“Commune”, curated by Dominique Nahas, Black and White Gallery, New York (USA)
“Le mirroir brise”, Viena Art Fair, with Ivan Gallery
2008
Romanian Art Today, Espace Tajan, Paris
15 Romanian and Hungarian Painters, curated by Jane Neal and Plan-B, Plan-B, Cluj Napoca
Preview Berlin, with Ivan Gallery
Show Off , with Ivan Gallery
2007
“Here/There”, Opaq Gallery, Jacksonville/Florida(USA)
2006
…A la Cluj / Galeria UNA Bucharest(RO)
“Retinal/Seduction”, Brukhental Museum, Sibiu /Museum of Contemporary Art, Miercurea-Ciuc/Casa Matei,Cluj-Napoca/ Anaid Art Gallery Bucharest
“Europa Artium”, Under Construction Space, Cluj-Napoca
2005
Love / Ecole Regionale des Beaux Arts de Nantes, Nantes
Images of You / “L.O.V.E.”, Nantes
I Love pictura / Under Costruction Space, Cluj-Napoca
2004
Brilliant / University of Arts and Design Cluj,Painting Department
Shoe Polish / Atas Gallery Cluj-Napoca
Intercrossed Workshop / Espace Cosmopolis, Nantes (F)
2003
University of Art and Design Cluj / Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana (SLO)
Black Underground / Casa Matei, Cluj-Napoca
Untitled / National Museum of Art, Cluj-Napoca
Bibliography
Paul Lester, “Armory Art Week; day 5,6 and 7”, Flavorwire, march 10, 2009
Joao Ribas “Being Alive: Susan and Michael Hort’, FlashArtonline, February 2009
Modernedition.com, Romanian Contemporary Art:The Cluj School Of Painting, 2010
Carola Rosca, “Ona Farcas”, Timeout Bucharest, nr 55, 8-14.02.2008
“Atelier Deschis”, 2006
“Figurativ si figura in arta romaneasca tanara” catalogue for “Retinal/Seduction” exhibition, 2006
“Paintings “1999-2004”, catalogue published by University of Arts and Design Cluj,Painting Department, 2004
Represented by: LARMgallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
Collections
Public Collections
Museum 21C Louisville Kentucky, USA
Taubmann Museum of Art, Virginia, USA
Fondation Frances, Senlis, Paris, France
Susan and Michael Hort Collection, New York
Art Foundation Mallorca (AFM), Spain
Private collections
Ole Faarup Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark
Aegidius Collection, Luxembourg and Denmark
Rodica Seward, Paris, France
Detlefs Collection, Denmark
Leif Djuurhus Collection, Denmark
vezi și:
How can I, as a female viewer and Oana Farcas, as artist “find myself” in these paintings that portray a whole history of a western and male art history?
I guess this is a long term question to Oana.