ZOLTÁN BÉLA, Artist Catalogue

Texts by: Zoltán Béla, Bogdan Coșa, Gergö Horváth, Ioana Mandeal, Adriana Oprea
Proof editing: Dorina Ivan
English translation: Iulian Curuia
Translation supervising: Bogdan Coșa
Project coordination: Anca Poterașu
Photo Credits: Dan Vezentan, Adi Bulboacă, Zoltán Béla
Design & Pre-press consultancy: Corina Gabriela Duma
Cover paper: Munken 300g/mp
Typeface: Merlo by Typoforge Studio
Printed: Masterprint
Circulation: 1000 / Bucharest, 2015
ISBN 978 -606-8642-43-7
Published by ARAC

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About ZOLTÁN BÉLA

Zoltan Béla (b. 1977) graduated from the University of Arts and Design in Cluj becoming best known for his hyper-realistic paintings with influences from the Cluj School of painting. Several years ago, he took the decision to shift his artistic practice towards experimentation, scrutinizing the limits between figurative and abstract painting, object making and installation. The artist now lives and works in Bucharest, where he explores the urban landscape of rust, patterns and textures – mapping out a fragmented history of human habitation in Eastern Europe. His latest series layers heavy textures inspired by remnants of old gates, walls and doors unto fragile surfaces of acrylic on paper. Their essential ambiguity encourages allusions, which range from the metaphysics of the fragment to questions of evanescence and memory.

READ MORE:https://ancapoterasu.com/zoltan-bela-cv/

ZOLTÁN BÉLA, Artist Catalogue, Published by ARAC, 2015

“First of all, Zoltán Béla is a collector – in reality and in the realm of the image. As with every collector, the artist’s attention is focused simultaneously on the objectand on the temporal regime the object implies. Being objets d’affection in the tradition of Breton, the pieces in his collection (whether material or immaterial) are the result of desire, of a significant affective encounter which can be traced both causally and as an eminently spontaneous, undetermined and apparently irrational action, which short-circuits the existing temporal order. The constant play of references of the artist’s imagination unwinds between the conscious expressions of collective memory (the permanent reservoir of symbols and cultural images) and the unconscious expressions of his personal biography (the DNA of a confined internal system, perfectly folded in upon its own history). Driven by a type of optical unconscious (which the artist described in a conversation as being “a pull towards that something which indirectly entices you”), the painting-as-practice operates according to the principles of an archeology of time: by investigating its intervals, the artist moves between reification and historical reanimation, displaying its leaps, its latencies and its co-existences into a convergent fabric, in which future and past intertwine. The taste for neo-romanticism and for ruins is inseparable from an anthropological, mystical/mythical view and from the interest for memorial art and historical landscapes –humanized even in their most austere representations.” Ioana Mandeal,  Transient Mood  — the Aesthetics of the Ephemeral Between Suspension and Affirmation, ZOLTÁN BÉLA, Artist Catalogue, Published by ARAC, 2015

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ARAC is a non-profit organization founded in June 2012, in order to produce and promote contemporary art in Romania and abroad. The initiative of the 58 Plantelor Residency belongs to Anca Poterasu, gallerist and ARAC President. The first edition of the Residency took place in 2015 and it was financed through a grant offered by Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and the Romanian Government.