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VALEN

ARTIST PROFILE AND COMPLETE CATALOGUE

The Theater Influence

I was born in 1960 in Moldova. I graduated from the Ion Creanga Academy in drawing and graphics.

In the 1990s I worked at the Eugene Ionesco Theater in Chisinau as a graphic designer/advertising painter. My job was to create posters for shows. I had to create and place at the entrance to the theater a large-scale work that had to perform two main tasks: attract the attention of people passing by the theater and describe with an image the play that was to be performed. In that period of my life I developed a personal artistic style, which started from the technical and formal needs that a theater poster of that type required and which became the language through which I express my ideas, concepts and emotions that I want to convey to the spectator or the reflections that I want to induce the audience to make.

The Abstract & The Figurative

My style could be defined as abstract-figurative and in some cases geometric abstraction. However, mine is not a pure abstraction because I tend to insert in most of my paintings some vague figurative hints, that is, a few elements that somehow recall objects from the real world. In this way, I try to give clues to the viewer for reading the painting, but it is not my intention to make him understand exactly what I wanted to express, but rather to help him begin a search for the meaning that ultimately can be slightly or totally different from the original meaning. A main element in my works are geometric shapes. I find that geometric shapes are elements that are part of both the figurative and abstract worlds. In addition to this, if they are two-dimensional they help you create and balance the composition, while if they have volume they help you create spatiality. And then, in a certain sense, they hide something mystical as if they recall the reality of a parallel world that is not visible to our eyes.