Presecan's Soul Touch

Bucharest 2015 Painter Claudiu Presecan was born in Cluj in 1969, where he lives and works. It was also in Cluj that he graduated from the “Ioan Andreescu” Academy of visual arts, obtained his Master’s Degree and PhD in visual arts. Claudiu has an impressive exhibition portfolio, as well as numerous national and international grants and awards. Claudiu Presecan is in love with nature, a passionate fly-fisherman, and a supporter of environmental protection. Above all, he is a painter with a preference for the abstract, who often paints in plein-air and who transfers nature onto his canvases in his own manner, which seduces through color and brushstrokes. Out of all the elements, water is the one that influences him the most, materializing in spectacular works. Claudiu uses his brush to lay traces, shades and surprising visual effects on water surfaces, a style which has become the artist’s personal mark. “Watermark”, the summer show at Artfooly, The Slice of Art Gallery brings to the ...

Solo show at the Cluj Art Museum, April 2015 The birth of my son was a very important moment in my life: everything was reborn for me and got new meanings, another dimension. I have discovered the river in its greatness and beauty. The resonance of silence, the beauty of the landscapes of my wanderings along the river and mountain waters led me to capture in painting the images of rapid or mild streams, they made me think of harmony and atemporality. Because of its sacred meaning (water is the symbol of life and death or immortality), the river remains a purifying and regenerative element. I have tried to express this idea through the filter of my soul enclined towards natural beauty. I have depicted impressions, aquatic or aerial elements, details, the water reflections in a first series of paintings starting with 2011 and have continued until 2013. This process led me to the exhibit titled “August Dream”, and continued with the “Magic River” and the present exhibit “In the Name ...

“The Magic River” represents a series of impressions and chromatic sketches, a spiritual stop-over near the mountain rivers close to me. Flickers of light, color spots, shadows and reflections, streams or water stillness, they all stand in my soul for vivid and colorful expressions of the river, a state of eternal harmony and unspoiled beauty. The paintings are an essay of transposing the river and its flow on canvas, in its primary essence as a symbol of life, describing the thrill and animated movement that it embodies. Tha exhibition starts December 3, at Napoca 15, in Cluj-Napoca Magic river | oil on canvas | 100 x 70 cm | 2013

I will exhibit my last series of works entitled "Path over water" from 4th to 9th of April 2011, at the Central Art Gallery inside the Central Shopping Center in Cluj-Napoca. As a natural consequence of the approach of the years 2005-2009, "Traces on water", in this last cycle the drawing appears as a completion of the painting and these two mediums bring each other more value, to highlight the main theme: the transcendent natural aquatic balance and the faith in human perennial values. The exhibition will be open from 4 PM to 8 PM. Opening of the exhibition on Monday, April the 4th, at 6 PM., by Dr. Alexandra Rus, art historian Address: 3rd floor, 22-26, Ferdinand St., Cluj-Napoca

There are times you never forget, some points in your life you feel like crossroad marks. That was my case back in 1994, when I went to Amsterdam for a master class in painting with J. Georg Dokoupil. With those good times on my mind, I went last week at the opening of Dokoupil’s last exhibition ( Dokoupil 100 ) in Prague Castle Riding School with Mara, my wife. It was a good journey; we leaved Cluj in a sunny, yet cold March day. We found the same weather in Prague, sunny but also windy. While attending Dokoupil’s Prague show, the good memories from the class in Amsterdam came on my mind, the time passed since those days, my artistic path ever since. I remember very well his words, on the proposed theme he entitled: “The intelligent line”. I recognized it now in his latest works, there are the same principles he unveiled to us during the workshop: new systems of artistic views, constant changes in art, strong potency on art materials,...

Sorin Campan: Pata Street, 2002, oil on cardboard, 31,5 x 36,5 cm Yesterday I visited Sorin Campan’s show at Plan B Gallery , here in Cluj. He belongs to an elder generation of Romanian artists, fully represented before 1989, while keeping a distance from the official art of the period. On the white walls of the gallery, under fluorescent light, I found his paintings to be very sensitive and warm. A kind of old moments, undefined times and petrified for eternity. There were mere landscape, but loaded with emotions. I was glad to discover these works in the gallery’s new agenda, among other renowned Transylvanian artists such as Gheorghe Ilea, who will be opening a show in Plan B’s space in Berlin next month. I found the atmosphere of Campan’s paintings resembling the paintings from the art school: full of life, mysterious and powerful. I would like to tell those of you who are in Cluj or have time to visit this show, it’s definitely worth it! I enjoyed it! Besides, when ...

Promenade des Anglais, Nice / oil on canvas / 100 x 100 cm / 2009 There are times which “catch” you, there are landscapes which „enchant” you and atmospheres which “embrace” you in a way which reveals long forgotten memories… such times are summer, the Mediterranean landscape and the atmosphere of the French Riviera. They all meet at this beginning of autumn in Cluj, in my simple “new paintings” or Mediterranean impressions. I can say, without emphasis, that the encounter of these three marks has made me incline towards colour beatitude and the rediscovery of emotions felt long ago. The postimpressionist landscape through the Cezannian example, the fauvism with its lyrical Dufy and tenor Matisse, the joy of life from Renoir and Bonnard’s coloured palette, together with the felt and seen blue , which veils you from everywhere, all these constitute the base of my new paintings. Three elements of the landscape become central through their repetition: the blue of the sea, the red-pin...