23 Aug Marius Bercea – This Side of Paradise
“It seemed only fitting that the first artist I want to introduce you to is actually the first Romanian contemporary artist I learned about.” This was the opening sentence of the inaugural article I wrote on Contemporary Art Friday, which centered on Marius Bercea ‘s artistic practice. What feels a bit surreal to me is the fact that at the time I had never seen one of his works in real life. I just had the vast internet and his artist book as my guidance. Even though I have always been one to champion the importance of actually experiencing an exhibition firsthand, the fact that Marius Bercea ‘s works often found a more prominent stage beyond Romania’s borders made this option difficult to achieve. In these past few years I have been incredibly fortunate to see his solo presentation at Frieze London which I previously wrote about here and visit his studio in Cluj, but I was still hoping for that moment an exhibition would be organized in our country.
This summer at the Art Encounters Foundation in Timisoara Diana Marincu curated an extensive exhibition of Marius Bercea ’s work spanning the past 15 years. The long journey across the whole country was a challenge with the work schedule I’ve had lately, but my anticipation for This Side of Paradise prevailed. Two days before the exhibition closed, we set off into the scorching August sun.
I thought long and hard which route I should take in writing about this exhibition. Although at first I followed the advice of starting with the rooms on the left and finishing on the right, I also wanted to experience the exhibition chronologically once I reached the last space and this is exactly what my partner felt the urge to do as well. I believe the fact that it ends with the earliest works is one of the exhibition’s hidden gems: it instantly sparks a desire to revisit the paintings according to the timeline they were created, tracing the artist’s journey. And since this path is the most recent in my memory, I ultimately decided I should write about the artworks in this order.
First we have the room centered on the artist’s research of the modern architectural spaces of the Black Sea coast built in the 1960s and 1970s. Paid vacations were given as rewards to the working class under the Communist regime, so in that time frame a lot of resorts were built, mainly inspired by American hotels. These complexes offered swimming pools, restaurants, and recreational spaces, providing a much-needed escape from the grey city life.
In this exhibition space you will notice there aren’t many characters portrayed in the 2011-2012 period of his work, as the artist chose to focus on capturing the environment of Romania’s seaside golden era. There is, however one large canvas featuring a group of people in the water, in front of a hotel. I was instantly transported back in time, when I would look into the scarce photo albums both my grandparents from my mother and my father’s side had from their youth- naturally most of them taken on their summer vacation with the children by their side, also featuring large groups of people bathing in the background. The color palette of the artwork reminded me of the sepia effect all those photographs had and how as a 4-year old I found it so difficult to imagine how the real colors looked when the photos were originally taken. The habitat which was designed by the regime so the masses got a sense of serenity once a year has thus been granted a place in art history due to the Marius Bercea’s masterful depiction of it.
In a similar color palette there is Truth with Multiple Masks, but this time there is a mysterious display of objects, buildings and array of characters, this technique of elements collaged together reminding of the chaotic 90s in Romania after its newfound freedom. This deliberate choice of mixing different references in a composition is a recurring theme in his work.
Facing the painting of the bathers, you’ll find The Outsider, from 2015, which sets the stage for the Transylfornian universe which gradually appeared in his artistic practice. Transylfornia is a realm where West Coast light meets Romanian shadows, as Andrew Berardini perfectly pointed out in an essay. This came to materialize after the artist’s first extensive trip into the Californian dessert. Even though I had studied Marius’s Sun Tan Mustang book featuring photos which are part of this artistic research, the exhibition has two rooms which served as a revelatory exploration of the artist’s creative process. Behind a shimmering peacock feather curtain, a recurring motif in Bercea’s oeuvre we’ll discuss later, the backstage secrets unfold. This space is dedicated to the screening of the SunTan Mustang video, which draws upon the artist’s digital archive of Californian expeditions during the 2014-2023 period.
Afterwards you can visit the adjacent room which features a different kind of archive, which hasn’t been exhibited before, of drawings and preliminary sketches. Many of them were actually created on the car’s dashboard during countless hours spent in Californian traffic, and I loved the fact that you can recognize elements from the digital archive, as with the Galon Boy below.
It was precisely these two rooms that brought me further clarity of how this commute between the West Coast and Cluj which has been spanning over ten years has shaped his artistic practice. This constant back and forth between such different worlds must have granted the artist the ability to observe some aspects the locals might overlook. Furthermore, all the waiting hours that entail the layovers on the way to Los Angeles and the subsequent jet lag have provided Marius with a time frame he chose to fill with books, as he is an avid reader. Whenever I visited his studio I got so many literary references that are riveting to connect to his paintings afterwards.
And then you arrive into the room where the Californian influence is everywhere. From the small painting depicting an American patio filled with plants, to Viewfinder ‘s blocks filled with neon signs on the right of the composition. The newfound vibrant neon shades in the paintings, as exemplified by Fountain of Mud and Honey also marks as a reference to the aesthetic the psychedelic fueled era in the 60s has birthed in California.
Marius Bercea ‘s inclination towards the study of the local architecture is omnipresent, and at this point Mexican style mansions and houses with luxurious pools take the stage. In Elastic Suspicion such an environment is beautifully orchestrated, but not without a twist. There is a couple dining on an island in the middle of the pool and all sorts of scenarios creep in: are those radioactive drinks going to be consciously consumed by both of them? His glass is half-full, perhaps she planned something all along? And right behind them there is a magnified vegetation taking up the majority of the canvas, perhaps emphasizing the important role plants play in the scorching constant heat of the West Coast, shielding the couple away from the privy eyes of the neighbors, but not from ours.
On the left side of the exhibition there is a room that continues the quest into Californian urban areas. It features three large canvases of different houses all adorned with pools but the atmosphere has a particular dramatic quality, as if you’re waiting for something peculiar to unfold. What captivated my attention is the way the paint is applied on the canvas- in this phase of his career, you can tell the canvanses are started horizontally and afterwards they are brought on the wall and further elaborated. Some elements of his native land are still included for those watching closely, such as that white spot mosaic floor in Trading Mystery that I’ve noticed in other artworks and written about before.
The pandemic brought a new shift into his work. The travel restrictions, the initial lockdown all pointed out towards finding inspiration in the vicinity. In the center of the next room there was the expansive canvas Perfume of candor featuring five characters impeccably dressed, posing surrounded by plants and watermelons. The rest of the space is filled with similar portraits of the artist’s friends who were born in the 90s, after the fall of the Communist regime in Romania. Many of them are his former students, from the days he would teach in the Painting department of UAD Cluj. There is an issue of identity for the generation who was born into democracy and grew up hearing all the horror stories with what used to happen just a few years before they arrived. There is also the matter of the massive exodus that happened resulting with many of them being raised by their grandparents while their parents worked abroad, or even being on their own when they started highschool, like my partner. The woman wearing a white ensemble on the right of Perfume of candor references a character featured in a play Matei Visniec wrote about this struggle. Although all the people are wearing their fabulous outfits, worthy of a fashion magazine shoot, they seem disconnected, all caught in their own meditative state. It really reminded me of how F. Scott Fitzgerald would portray his characters in The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby. The exhibition’s title is actually a nod to the American writer’s first novel, This Side of Paradise where fresh out of college, the leading man learns the disillusionment of adulthood.
There is also Sport Sun which at first leaves you puzzled- is this light so bright in some spots because it’s a Hollywood movie set? Or is it just a very hot Californian day? But where are we really, based on the blooming tree? To me the cabin reminded me a bit of a prop from TV shows and not a real building, so maybe this is what started this whole narrative in my head. Then there are also the characters – you can’t tell if they are deliberately posing in this manner (the man lighting a cigarette on the left to his friend is an instance I have seen before in Marius Bercea ‘s paintings) or you’re just getting a glimpse of a break between takes, where two actors are sharing a quick smoke, while the couple at the dinner table are waiting for the filming to resume.
This room also included my favorite artwork, Huntington Gardens, which I never imagined I would actually see up close. There are two reasons this composition is an utopic scene for me: first, I immediately recognized the woman’s attire, it’s an outfit by Smaranda Almasan from one of my favorite collections. Second, the lush vegetation depicted within the painting evoked a sense of tranquility. I haven’t visited the Huntington Gardens of California, but when I first saw this painting on Instagram two years ago, all I wanted was to be transported right there, ideally wearing that same outfit. Upon examining the painting closely, I discovered Marius’s exceptional mastery of green hues. His reverence for the vegetation is evident in the meticulous brushstrokes that seem to bring the plants to life.
We’ve now arrived to the final rooms which center on the last few years’ tumultuous events. There is however, one person appearing in most of the works in the space: the artist’s son. This recent period has been chaotic to say the least, but how do you keep calm and present the world to your firstborn? Lactiflora features a self-portrait of the artist holding his son as a toddler against a backdrop of Cluj architectural symbols and once again impeccably painted vivid vegetation.
They are looking towards the other side of the room, which features one of the two largest works of the show, The Grace of April Light. For me, the woman’s expression in this painting has always emphasized perfectly my reaction to the world news, each more gruesome than the other. What I love about the artwork is that the whole composition and portrayal of characters made me feel while glancing from afar as if I was in a theatre, watching a play, on the verge of a very tense moment. Still, as I moved closer, another kind of magic happened: not only I was reminded I have, in fact, a painting in front of me, but the reflection of the greenery in the window kept me circling back to it- the brushstrokes remind me of the Impressionists and particularly about the first time I saw Monet’s Water Lillies at Musée de l’Orangerie and I had the same the same fascination with stepping backwards and then immerse myself back into the details repeatedly.
There is also The Astronomer triptyque where the artist can be seen showing his son the world using a spinning globe – does this lesson entail also being aware that he can also look for his own place elsewhere when he grows up? Untitled (Boy Watching the Breaking News) depicts him in a more mature phase, now reading his own news on a tablet.
And now about the most recent work included in the exhibition: Bertoia and Poussin is a masterpiece. The background features brushwork that is quintessentially his acclaimed style. There’s a Harry Bertoia chair elevated, pointing towards Nicolas Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents. This artwork serves as a metaphor to how we have been watching the horrific reality this society has turned into from the comfort of our homes in the last years. The breeze blocks, a recurring decor element in Marius Bercea ‘s paintings, now symbolize a resistance to progress. While someone may eventually occupy the chair, they too will be subject to surveillance. The peacock feather curtains represent not only the sacred bird of Hera, but also the watchful eye the Romanians are well accustomed to. It’s a mature artwork, exquisitely painted, which captures the current events with surgical precision.
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Diana Marincu curated an incredible exhibition that so beautifully captures different periods on Marius Bercea’s artistic practice and the behind the scenes of his creative process. And it’s a bit difficult to write a text that follows seeing Bertoia and Poussin so I thought about just randomly opening my copy of This Side of Paradise and see if the first page that pops reveals any wisdom I can share in this context:
“Why do we have to do the next thing? It never seems the sort of thing I should do.”
“We have to do it because we’re not personalities, but personages.”
“That’s a good line—what do you mean?”
“A personality is what you thought you were, what this Kerry and Sloane you tell me of evidently are. Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on—I’ve seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides ’the next thing.’ Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he’s done.”
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