Victor Man

Last updated

Victor Man (born 1974) is a Romanian-born artist and painter.

Contents

Career

In the late nineties, Victor Man enrolled as a student at the Academia de Arte Plastice Ioan Andreescu, Cluj, but left after two years in order to study in Jerusalem between 2000 and 2004. While in Jerusalem, he lived at the Poor Clares' Convent (Monastère de Sainte Claire  [ he ]), and during this time mainly painted from nature inside of the monastery garden. Man returned to Cluj in 2004 and finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts. [1]

From 2005 onward his method of painting changed radically, from the previous observational 'au premier coup' paintings, executed during his study years in Jerusalem, to more conceptually charged paintings, produced through a slow and methodical process.

Victor Man received the 2014 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year award, followed by a solo exhibition at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, which traveled further to Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. [2]

In 2007 he represented Romania at the Venice Biennale, together with the artists Cristi Pogacean, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor. [3]

In 2015 he contributed to the Venice Biennale a second time, when his work was featured in the main exhibition, "All The World's Futures," curated by Okwui Enwezor in the Central Pavilion. [4]

In 2016, Galerie Neu in Berlin hosted an exhibition of Man's work. [5]

Work, style

Man often has a preference for painting in dark colors, reminiscent of the work of 18th century landscape painters, who used black mirrors, also known as "Claude glasses," to turn colors into dark key tones. [6] His works capture moods, offering the onlooker nothing but ambiguous, vague tracks, and leaving him or her in a haze. [7] [6] They also render a memory of images and objects made up of different layers of time, which appear to waver between disappearance and reminiscence. Victor Man’s highly personal poetics and the illustrative diversity of his output trace the outlines of an artistic world in which historical facts and subjective impressions coming from different worlds and periods are grounded. [7] Man is said to be equally inspired by the ancient and the modern. [8]

In his work he concentrates on the development of an autonomous iconography in which frequent literary references intermingle with his own biography. [9] Literature and art history, collective memory and personal experience, are the elements woven together by the artist into a non-linear story where distinctions between present and past, fiction, imagination and reality are abolished. [10] Uncertainty and oscillation between gender find an echo in other forms of transition: from human to animal, organic to artificial, face to mask. This overlapping of points of reference runs throughout all his works, where the fusion of occult, gender, androgyny, or, more generally, the uncertainty of physiognomy and appearance form a recurrent theme that strengthens the image of an identity in perpetual movement and suggests how rich and mysterious the essence of things can be beyond their appearance. [11] The paintings never provide explanations, but hints and suggestions that leave the viewer with the feeling that a reversal of all meanings is always possible. [10]

Art market

Man has been represented by David Zwirner Gallery (since 2024), Gladstone Gallery and Galerie Max Hetzler. [12]

Public collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bridget Riley</span> British painter (born 1931)

Bridget Louise Riley is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarkis Zabunyan</span> French conceptual artist of Turkish-Armenian descent

Sarkis Zabunyan, known as Sarkis, is a French conceptual artist.

Tomma Abts is a German-born visual artist known for her abstract oil paintings. Abts won the Turner Prize in 2006. She currently lives and works in London, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Scholte</span> Dutch artist

Rob Scholte is a Dutch contemporary artist. From 1977 to 1982 he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. His work consists of reproductions of images from the media and from art history. He lives and works in Den Helder.

Miao Xiaochun is an artist and photographer based in Beijing.

Avner Ben-Gal was an Israeli international painter and artist, working mainly from Tel Aviv, Israel. His works depict various intense, often neglected locations such as agricultural fields, prisons and smoky interiors, whereby theatrical scenes play out. The scenes present ghostly, rough hewn and often low life figures that are bare and hardened. The parallel between Ben-Gal's raw way of painting and his tough, ambiguous subject matter allows a unique intensity within his paintings.

Andro Wekua is a Georgian artist based in Zurich, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adel Abdessemed</span> Algerian artist (born 1971)

Adel Abdessemed is an Algerian-French contemporary artist. He has worked in a variety of media, including animation, installation, performance, sculpture and video. Some of his work relates to the topic of violence in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz West</span>

Franz West was an Austrian artist.

Gregor Schneider is a German artist. His projects have proven controversial and provoked intense discussions. In 2001, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his infamous work Totes Haus u r exhibited at the German Pavilion.

Rémy Zaugg was a Swiss painter, primarily known as a conceptual artist. He played an important role as both a critic and observer of contemporary culture, especially with regards to the perception of space and architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Lester</span> Dutch inventor, visual artist and film director

Gabriel Lester is an inventor, visual artist and film director living and working in Amsterdam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marijke van Warmerdam</span> Dutch artist

Marijke van Warmerdam is a Dutch artist.

Pavel Pepperstein is a Russian artist and writer.

Koo Jeong A is a South-Korean born mixed-media and installation artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berend Strik</span> Dutch visual artist

Berend Strik is a Dutch visual artist working and living in Amsterdam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alicia Framis</span>

Alicia Framis is a contemporary artist living and working in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She develops platforms for creative social interaction, often through interdisciplinary collaboration with other artists and specialists across various fields. Her work is project based and focuses on different aspects of human existence within contemporary urban society. Framis often starts out from actual social dilemmas to develop novel settings and proposed solutions. Framis studied with the French minimalist artist Daniel Buren and the American conceptual artist Dan Graham and her work can be located within the lineages of relational aesthetics, performance art, and social practice art. She represented the Netherlands in the Dutch Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). She is currently the director of an MA program at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, Netherlands and a lecturer at Nebrija University in Madrid, Spain. In 2019, Alicia Framis was awarded with the Lucas Artists Visual Arts Fellowship 2019-2022 in California.

Oscar Tuazon is an American artist based in Los Angeles who works in sculpture, architecture, and mixed media.

Daniël (Daan) van Golden was a Dutch artist, who has been active as a painter, photographer, collagist, installation artist, wall painter and graphic artist. He is known for his meticulous paintings of motives and details of everyday life and every day images.

References

  1. ↑ Van den Boogerd, Dominic. “Out of the Cold: On Victor Man’s Work of Restraint,” Art Papers, January/February 2008, pp.22-25. http://gladstonegallery.com/sites/default/files/10_ArtPapers_JanFeb08_0.pdf
  2. ↑ "Dark Metamorphoses: Victor Man is Artist of the Year 2014" http://db-artmag.de/en/80/feature/dark-metamorphoses-victor-man-is-artist-of-the-year-2014/
  3. ↑ "Low-Budget Monuments: The Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale" http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/low-budget-monuments-the-romanian-pavilion-at-the-venice-biennale/
  4. ↑ "Venice: Victor Man at The Central Pavilion" http://www.artwritingdaily.com/2015/05/venice-victor-man-at-central-pavilion.html
  5. ↑ Galerie Neu, Victor Man, April – June, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 "Victor Man", MUDAM Museum, Luxembourg. Re-accessed 24 June 2023.
  7. 1 2 Morton, Tom. "Shape Shifter", Frieze, Nov–Dec 2008, pp. 160–165.
  8. ↑ ArtWorks: The Deutsche Bank global art program, "Victor Man—Zephyr 'Artist of the Year,' 2014", Mar 21 – Jun 22, 2014.
  9. ↑ Rabottini, Alessandro. "Plural Solitude," Map, Issue 1, Autumn 2007, p. 36–41.
  10. 1 2 Nastac, Simona. "Victor Man," Flash Art, Vol. XXXIX, No. 251, Nov–Dec 2006.
  11. ↑ Watson, Simon. "New Artist: Victor Man," Whitewall, No. 6, Sum 2007, p. 64
  12. ↑ Alex Greenberger (2 October 2024), David Zwirner Adds ‘Quintessentially European’ Painter Victor Man to Its Roster ARTnews .
  13. ↑ "Zéphir (Hommage à Lautréamont)" . Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  14. ↑ "Victor Man. On relative loneliness | GAMeC". www.gamec.it. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  15. ↑ "Interventie #8 Victor Man - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen". www.boijmans.nl. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  16. ↑ "Victor Man". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  17. ↑ "CENTRE INTERNATIONAL D'ART ET DU PAYSAGE DE L'ILE DE VASSIVIERE". www.ciapiledevassiviere.com. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  18. ↑ "Untitled".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.