Today I'd like to return to and write about my experience at one of the latest exhibitions I visited last month, called Maritime. It was a solo exhibition of Radu Florea, a very particular one in term of topics and execution. If you have missed my first post about the exhibition, you can still check it out here.
The particularity of this exhibition was that all the artworks were connected to water in one way or another.
African Pirogue In The Port Of Dakar
If you don't know what piroue is, here it is for you:
A pirogue, also called a piragua or piraga, is any of various small boats, particularly dugouts and canoes. The word is French and is derived from the Spanish piragua, which comes from the Kalinago piraua.
It's a pretty interesting painting and I'm curious to know what you see here.
Water Series, Only Water And Sky
There are many keywords I could mention regarding the work of the artist, but if I were to mention a few, those would be out of the box and unconventional.
Frames have their role and used to add aesthetic value to paintings, drawings, by their color, texture and material. Those times are not gone, but there's another role added to frames these days. As you can see, they serve as an extension to the artwork. Do I like it? I'm not against it, but it's definitely not a yes or no question as it depends heavily on the artwork and how it is used. I like these though.
The Waive
Looks like the waive got out of hand here and covered not only the frame, but the painting tripod. I've seen plenty of odd exhibits, artworks over the years, this fits as one of them, but in a good sense. It's really interesting and funny too, to see the paint cans, along with the brushes and rugs.
At The Shore
Red Sunset
After I visited the exhibition, was thinking in how many ways can you paint water, or how many artworks you can create based on this subject. In my artistically untalented mind, there aren't many, but a talented artist can create wonders. So far the paintings we saw were made using pretty much the same colors, which are different shades of blue, white, yellow and green. Here it is, this paining that has red as reflection of the sun while setting is coloring the water nicely.
A few words from the artist.
The Sea Through The Porthole
This is another example of what can you create a painting about water, I would have never thought about this option, but it's not my favorite either.
Sea Sunset From The Ship Window I.
Sea Sunset From The Ship Window II.
Sea Sunset From The Ship Window III.
This was interesting. At first glance you think it's a series of four pieces, as it look similar, you think only the colors change, which is indeed, i mean a series, but the titles are very different.
Upper left - African Pirogue
Lower left - Indian Ocean
Upper right - The Smell Of The Ocean
Lower right - Biscaya, Bay Of Great Storms
To give you an idea of the size of the artworks. I like how they chose to arrange these on the wall as they are connected in one way or another.
It was a really particular exhibition, but also showed me how wrong I was thinking water is water, maritime means only that. There are no limits when it comes to interpretation and here's the proof.
If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:
