On Saturday, July 13, at 2:00 p.m., the exhibition “Fragments” by the artists Sorin Ilfoveanu and Adrian Ilfoveanu, a cultural project supported by the Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation, will open in the premises of the fortified evangelical church in Alma Vii, Sibiu county.
The exhibition’s opening will take place in the presence of the artists Adrian and Nicu Ilfoveanu and will include an acoustic concert by the instrumentalist Călin Han. The exhibition can be visited until September 30, 2024.
The creation of the two invited artists will enter into dialogue with the history-laden space of the place of worship that received its footprint more than 600 years ago when Alma Vii was a small medieval settlement. The church was enriched with period-specific fortifications in the 16th century, gaining even greater significance for the village’s inhabitants and becoming the center of life for several generations of locals. The special architectural ensemble, a true storyteller of a vanished way of life, has undergone numerous alterations and damages over time.
Thanks to the involvement of the Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation since 2008, through extensive restoration processes, but also through the efforts of the small community to revive the life of the village, Alma Vii, together with its spiritual and cultural core, the fortified evangelical church, have regained their autonomy and meaning existence. This year, the foundation’s outstanding efforts were rewarded by winning the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award in the “Conservation and Adaptive Reuse” category.
The “Fragments” exhibition, which brings to Alma Vii the works of Sorin and Adrian, painter and sculptor, is the continuation of the local cultural initiative started in 2023 which aims to bring, year after year, to the fortified church, the creation of valuable artists for the cultural romanian environment. The work of the invited artists enters into conversation with the rich history of the place and with the traditions that constitute an arc over time, revalued by the living presence of a reborn community, through a curatorial concept specially built for each artist and for each new chapter. This year’s exhibition, the second of its kind, is curated by Cosmin Florea, scenographer and ceramist.
Călin Han is an enthusiast of organology, the science that studies musical instruments and their history, with a special preference for wind instruments. Born in Cluj, he began his musical studies early, being raised in a family of musicians. For over ten years, he has lived in Sibiu and worked as a clarinetist in the military marching band of the Land Forces Academy. His soul project is the duo “Hanu’ cu Bragă,” through which he promotes wind instruments accompanied by the drum.
About „Fragments”
Sorin Ilfoveanu’s work consists of a large collection of paintings and drawings, which, viewed in reverse, from the work to its creator, faithfully follow the trajectory of a life lived for creation. From this vast archive, it is difficult to select, to intervene in the sense of creating categories or divisions. The few works, the “fragments” of Ilfoveanu’s work, present in the exhibition in the church in Alma Vii, together constitute a window through which you can look, for a moment, at the entirety of the artist’s extremely personal work. Three essential coordinates from Ilfoveanu’s world now amplify the space of the old fortification: the landscape painting, the static nature, and the character.
The landscapes of Sorin Ilfoveanu take their essence from the long periods spent in Rădești, in Argeș, where the painter created a real refuge, a fort of creation, for himself and his family of artists. The landscapes created in Rădești bear the imprint of a personal emotional attachment to the place, a deep feeling that is nurtured especially by those from small communities, such as those in villages. Much thinned today by the human diversity present in cities, the feeling of belonging to a certain space reveals itself to us rarely, fantastically, and becomes special. Bridge of the meeting with this particular feeling, Ilfoveanu’s landscape, with the clarity of its lines, invites to rediscover a human, inner affective state, more than to contemplate a particular corner of nature, which, moreover, is generalized.
The large-scale canvas, in the composition of which the static nature is unusually placed, under an impenetrable sea of dark color, introduces another essential “fragment” of the painter’s work. Lacking the human presence, the work still vibrates the closeness of man through the elements that can be seen: the bird, the only living thing in the scene, cared for by man, in turn the protector of its caretaker, as it appears many times at Ilfoveanu, the cloth worked with embroidery, of an immaculate white, and the household objects in the sphere of the kitchen, food preparation and dining, an activity that is at the center of family human existence, closeness. The static nature here is nothing but a natural continuation of man and his life, which takes place in complete freedom only in personal spaces that receive a precious privacy, that of the home.
The character is among Ilfoveanu’s most significant concerns, present in all creative periods and at the intersection of all subjects in the painting. The expressive figures, inspired by close people, explored in various poses, also refer to the environment in the immediate vicinity, deeply researched by the artist. Inspecting even more closely the familiar, the surrounding man, the ordinary table, the landscape viewed day by day, Ilfoveanu brings back to our attention human affective dispositions, eternal, timeless, intrinsically linked to the familiar place, to human intimacy, both internal and external, and the narrow community in which one finds most of the comforts of existence. In contrast to the paintings and drawings present in the exhibition, the singular sculpture, which belongs to Adrian Ilfoveanu, entitled Fallen Angel, emphasizes the idea of the human being intrinsically linked to the matter, to the physical space around him, to the house, to the place of toils, dreams, and its experiences. Remaining in the sphere of the character, the face carved in stone of the Angel, next to the serpentine body, refers to the imperishable duality within man: carnal-spiritual, divine-worldly.
The fragments of the creation of the father and son artists, collected in the exhibition in the fortified church of Alma Vii, put the history of the place in context and enhance its newly found purpose. Equally, the subject of a beloved landscape, looked at every day by the people here, a place to which man has given meaning, which he preserves even in human absence, but also a welcoming threshold for the community, the church becomes, year after year, an exhibition space as well, creating a communication path between art, history and the legacy left by it to the small village community.
Scenography and curator: Cosmin Florea
Text: Maria Munteanu, Propaganda – Visual Arts Magazine
Partners: Viscri 32 – White Barn & Blue House, Viscri Ceramics, Stycle Medias