Marcel Rusu

Marcel Rusu’s contemplative paintings reflect on the intricate relation between image and memory. Treating images as distorted memories, he employs chromatic filtering to produce complex and expressive works, filled with disconnected fragments and details. These reflect the idea that meaning is constructed like memories, through isolated fragments and their associations. A recurrent element in his work is the use of curtains as a figurative device which partially hides fragments of reality, revealing the tense, dialectal relation between presence and absence. These processes end up alluding to the transience of human existence, the fragility of memories and the ways in which we preserve them.

Marcel Rusu was born in 1989 in Medias, Romania. He currently lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, where he is doing a doctorate at the University of Art and Design. In the past three years, he had several exhibitions at Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, including the solo exhibition Personal Metonymies (2018) and the group exhibitions Bluebird (2018) and The Exquisite Corpse Drinks the New Wine (2017). His international exhibitions include Haiku. Poems by emerging Romanian Artists at Boccanera Gallery, Trento, Italy (2017) and Around Drawing: Group show at Rosenfeld Gallery, London (2015).