We Are the Apocalypse - Solo Exhibition by Liviu Alexa

Three of the recurring limits of contemporary painting have often been identified as the limits of abstract painting, of mimesis, and of the artist’s personal expression. With the exhibition We Are the Apocalypse, artist Liviu Alexa interrogates primarily the latter two. One of the essential questions the artist poses concerns precisely the expressive possibilities of figurative painting, discovering that it can be not merely a “text,” but also a “subtext” or even a “pretext” for the artistic intention of figuring the visible world. It is no coincidence that Liviu Alexa accentuates the contrasting qualities of his imaginary, relying not only on the obvious attributes of the intensity characteristic of his chromatic nuances, but constantly seeking to provoke acts of investigation into visual polysemanticism, capable of eliciting new interpretations. Only seemingly obvious, Liviu Alexa’s painting is, at its core, a visually deft game, a charade, because in fact it offers us nothing but clues about what, at first glance, it appears to reveal. This is how the “subtexts” or even “pretexts” that Liviu Alexa’s art holds in store for us are created. Emblems of post-humanity haunt his canvases at every turn, as if pointing to just as many causes behind the crisis of values in a world that is losing its bearings. Archangels stripped of miracle, robots baptizing children, innocence lost with the departure from the paradise of childhood, or sirens agonizing in sewer drains are but a few examples of the ideas and images describing a dystopian world, deviated from its original purposes and thus losing its “center” or the foundations that initially shaped its functioning.

As can be observed from the examples regarding the artist’s personal expression, the current plastic formulations in Liviu Alexa’s works highlight a heightened sensitivity to the subjective springs of the artistic act, which lends some of these creations an authentic neo-expressionist sensibility, while imprinting others with a problematizing figurativism that tackles uncomfortable contemporary themes.

Dr. Dan Breaz, curator