Object Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Silaghi, Leonardo |
Title |
Untitled #1313203 |
Medium |
Oil on canvas |
Date |
2013 |
Description |
Leonardo Silaghi (Satu Mare, Romania 1987; lives and works in Cluj, Romania) Untitled #1313203, 2013 Oil on canvas 90 ½ x 120 inches Knoxville Museum of Art, 2013 purchase Leonardo Silaghi's turbulent paintings express the chaotic transition of his Romanian homeland from a decaying Soviet satellite state to a twenty-first century society still taking shape. Although Silaghi (born 1987) was only two years old when Romania's communist history came to an abrupt end, he experienced its aftermath through family members, teachers, and others from the preceding generation. His paintings are loosely based on historic black and white images depicting abandoned Cold War machinery littering his country's landscape. Conveyor belts, empty vehicles, ductwork, and other wreckage from the past become focal points for his compositions, while serving as surrogates for human activity and symbols of failed systems. The artist's choice of oversized format echoes the monumental scale of Cold War-era propaganda paintings designed to promote grand visions of national progress and promise. However, Silaghi replaces heroic realist imagery with shadowy, fragmented industrial scenes violently distorted by forceful brushwork and muted by prevailing tones of gray. The large scale of the artist's canvases also provides an arena capable of containing his vigorous technique. Visible on close inspection is a dynamic range of technical effects-broad sweeping strokes, curtains of dripping paint, thin washes of brilliant color, areas of bare canvas, clumps of unmixed pigment, and applied tape and other collage elements. In contrast to this attention to surface, delicate painted passages give the illusion of depth and hint at the existence of pictorial space. Occasional shadows and highlights transform winding strokes of paint into structures suggesting strips of metal or wires dangling in air. As a result, his paintings take on a dual identity as abstract records of studio activity and as scenes of decay glimpsed through the veil of memory. It is this coexistence of contradictory elements and opposing forces that energizes Silaghi's abstractions, and enables them serve as enduring scenes of transition. Leonardo Silaghi is a graduate of the University of Art and Design in Cluj, Romania. Since 2009, he has been featured with solo exhibitions at the Laika Gallery in Cluj, Marc Straus Gallery in New York, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, where he was artist in residence in 2010. Recently his works were shown at the exhibition "After the Fall" at the HVCCA in Peeksville and the Knoxville Museum of Art. Through a generous gift of New York collectors Marc and Livia Straus in 2013, and a purchase, the KMA is fortunate to be among the first American museums to have acquired a group of Silaghi's works. |
Catalog Number |
2013.07.01 |
Search Terms |
Oil paintings Paintings Canvas Collage |
Credit line |
Knoxville Museum of Art, purchase |