The Old Gallery, Cluj-Napoca 2002 

“An understanding of the surroundings, the earth, the skies, the light, the cosmos even as entities or living generative configurations has led Claudiu Presecan to a reconsideration of time as communication by inventing a nostalgic paradise world. 
The possessor of a creative drive free of all and any conventionality, Presecan styles in an original way sequences of his own inner garden, an authentic plastic universe, steeped in the freshness and joy of discovery.
His chromatic dynamics speaks of his keenness to produce the “expectation tension”, directed not at a real or invented space or actuated time but rather at a “state”; the nostalgia of the paradise garden being simply “the garden of clear spiritual experience.”
His painting is one flooded by luminous effluence, combining clusters of chromatic nuclei, light wing-like strokes, adept arabesque modulations, emphatic counterpoints laid on the secret gold section. Image with him becomes an eerie place, a magical one where a substantiation of contrasting pairs: male/female, full/empty, geometric/organic, verticality/movement, earthly and cosmic, is made possible.
The surprise and the unexpected generated by his exceptional creativity espouses a shift from the ascending force of the chromatic bands of ’98, a corollary to the need for spiritual elevation, to the ouroborous, the cosmic spiral, and on to the frenzy of experiencing the potentialities of the world. Crossovers, flexions, chromatic clusters – a sui generis passing from abstract vibration to a clustering of chromatic nuclei in a cold/warm rapport, supplementing each other at times in their claim at perceiving the unseen. Thus, the aggregates of chromatic nuclei, resounding an original shaping of elements from an “unseen enclave” bordering on the abstract, the exquisite areas of nuclei either in individual colour or in adept groupings in oil, acrylic, rugged or refined, evoke a mountain, a forest, the fresh orchard in blossom, the lake, the serene skies or, in contrast, the trajectory of a star, the melodious genesis of a galaxy.”
 
 

“Impression Soleil Levant”
National Museum of Art, January 2001
“
Claudiu Presecan, is only thirty two years old, but holder of fine exhibition record, which is publicly successful and already gaining response. Undoubtedly he is favorable assumed by art critique, once he is extremely carefully preparing his works for the way out for his representation. Ever since his two years ago show, which he named it with tender dispute as "on a heaven like realm", art critics have sensed beyond the character of his explosive chromatic fairy scenes and beyond a certain ludicrous sense of approach. Due to the strictness of a underground conceptual program, viewing a crucial and contentious underground assumption of some specific matters of specific Romanian traditional landscape paintings, is should be surely interesting, for the same clue, to even make a reading according to it, on Claudiu Presecan's steps of hidden creation. This creation is structured upon distinct cycles, only seemingly diverging, which they are, as a matter of fact coherently developing from each other. In meantime the artist is resuming, deepening whatever he feels important for his development within a framework of an essential postmodern vision.
The prior objective of this most recent stage of this ambition creation program, which is obstinately worked out by Claudiu Presecan, is also clearly defined by the exhibition title itself. Extending and going thoroughly into the aims of the previous stage, the artist analyses the impressionist painting from an individual perspective, a sensitive approach which brings important results within the area of his own creation. Affirmation and denial of the impressionist attitude in the contemporary art proves, in fact a permanent attraction exercised by this orientation. It has been considered, at first as a revolution with repercussion of decisive importance in the artistically becoming of the 20th century or, on the contrary, as the spectacular ending, of an artistically evolution having as nucleus a concept (the mimesis) which, from the nonfigurative definitively losts its patness.
Claudiu Presecan's creation in the exhibition of this stage reveals a painter fascinated by the hidden, chancing and endless character of interception possibilities into the one ad the spontaneous act, so whatever it is revealed to us by image is coming from a subtle joining between sensitive observation and visual culture, applied to some natural motives that had been loaded themselves by inner vigour. It looks like the painter is no more afraid of becoming vulnerable as far as he is giving up the detached, slightly ironic or self-bentered attitude. He recovers in fresh emotion, no cultural inhibitions, a vegetative nature teeming with vigour and he delightly abandons himself to the effect of the moment. He enjoys the freshness of the air and the caress of the wind, of the blue and the light beam penetrating the trees moving foliage or the freakish game of the reflexes on the translucid and moving mirror of the water… Along with this nature rediscovery, light is the first to come as a herd of the image for the painter's best interest. The colours are deliberately limited to the pure prime-tunes of the prism, the full harmony of which is potentialed by the prop's white and colided blacks. Seemingly fresh wet, the water streams emanated by the lake embraced by the sun warmth, sparkling like precious stones, which had remarkably seized the light within their transparent crystals, the colours covers the canvas in wide voluptuous gesture, which, loaded by vital energy ends in a genuine rhythm integrated to the ones of natural being, as well as in the dynamic ones, proper to the contemporary experience. The freedom of the energetic gesture, programmatically assumed by a fanatic abstract impressionism practitioner gives even to this stage of Claudiu Presecan an authentically endorsement, within the frames of a certain acuteness, programmatically exacerbating a mark for contemporary of its own.

Livia Dragoi, Ph.D.
National Museum of Art Cluj
Head Manageress
 

IMPRESSIONS, LE SOLEIL…. LEVANT (BYZANCE); show to the Romanian Embassy in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN, MAY-JUNE 2001

“Impressions, rising sun…” is a paraphrase after the Claude Monet’s famous work with the same title, symbolising the birth of self-conscience in the artistic Impressionism. But the Levant, in the accept of European traditional culture and civilisation signifies the spiritual space of the European oriental sensitivity with roots in Balkan Peninsula and the history springing from Byzance. The exhibition of these young Romanian artists laying under this generic has a double signification: the re-waking of origins conscience and the solar levitation by which those, at least in Romania after 1989, take back their places in the lines of the international artistic phenomenon. 
It is not only about the escape of young artists’ art from ancient communist stereotypes and the lining within the contemporary international artistic phenomenon, but also about the entrance on the territory of a new kind of freedom and the assuming of a certain spontaneity that become criteria of artistic value. The sediments of old academic education are dislocated and evacuated under the forte jet of the sensorial expressiveness and of a dis-inhibited chromatic acuity. The repertoire of plastic forms modifies as the pictorial procedures. The original impressionism is exulted by expressionism and the spirituality specific to the great lesson of Paul Klee. But the most surprising impressions is the fact this painting, possessing also the softness and discrete sparkling of tapestries (Romanian traditional carpets) is re-oriented on the European art direction by the impressing Gate (not the Turk one guarding the Balkans) made by the group of Nordic artists named “Cobra” (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) that has become for young Romanian artists a manifestation of live and not surprising affinity. 
For Claudiu Presecan, the native tradition is treated in a slightly bantering manner, entraining, sub-textually, a benign irony of the discourse, a gravity of the reflection masked by a game of indifference and giving back engagement, in a precipitated but colloquial discourse which hides the polemic reports with ancient myths of traditional landscape painting. There is a chromatic hedonism (in the good sense of the word) assumed in a tashist formula where the report between form and colour stain inverse. 
“Composition weight” underlined by graphic modulations is counterbalanced by the evanescent lyricism of a “action painting” manner. The landscaping space, re-composed in the workshop, re-iterates the chromatic impressions invading his retina and transform into a voluptuous game where the depths and transparent plans are kept in a permanent dialogue. The language freedom assumed constantly as a criterion of his appertaining to contemporary art, the refuse of concrete detail, the extirpation of rustic composition of the landscape prove the townsman evading from an Arcadia whose utopias are replaced by the modern value of the Urban. His fresh sensitivity writes again the old themes in a contemporary language, but with a conciliating submission towards the marvellous space of Balkan and Byzantine universe. 

Radu Vasile
Art Critic 
 
 

“Art from the land of Dracula at Cuyler St.”
by INA RANDALL

PORT ELISABETH gets an artistic taste of Transylvania this month with an exhibition of the work of Claudiu Presecan at the Cuyler Street Gallery. The exhibition opened this week and the work will be on show till April 24. As most South Africans know Transylvania mainly as the home of the infamous Count Dracula, this new perspective serves a definite educational purpose. Presecan Comes from Cluj, which is, in turn, an integral part of Romania.
Possibly the Hollywood images implanted by the Dracula movies are not that far out, because, according to Presecan, Transylvania is 'one of the most adventurous areas of Europe'. It lies in an area of fertile confluence among ethnic groups and cultures. For centuries it has been a witness to the meetings and struggles, defeats and victories, between Europe's East and West. In addition a vital archaic folk tradition in the area has endlessly nourished Romanian art and culture.
The result is a strongly individualised mix of many cultures and many influences. One might find Dacian weapons and jewellery, Roman temples, Romanic and Gothic churches, Renaissance castles, Barbarian treasures and baroque palaces, some of them indeed connected with the Dracula legend. In counter balance Eastern Europe contributed Byzantine icons and old wooden churches, unique in the world for their harmony of proportion. The famous Transylvanian silversmiths made a special contribution and Judaic, Armenian and Turkish artists completed the fusion.
It follows that the modern Romanian artists has a vast field of influence to draw from, always hovering somewhere between the tradition of the order and the modernism of adventure. This is reflected in the work of Presecan.
The works on show locally are very modern, yet the artist graduated in Transylvania with a specialised dissertation on the glass icons of that country. Indeed the two intertwine: A Romanian art critic has described Presecan's world as "a sumptuous tapestry in which the antagonisms of the world are woven into a coherent whole".
Presecan addresses the Transylvanian landscape painting tradition with benign irony, imposing the modern urban values of the city dweller on the lyricism of Arcadia and Utopia.
He has exhibited widely in Eastern Europe as well as the Netherlands and Canada and has been involved in some fascinating art related projects.
Included in his curriculum vitae is the creation of background décor for productions in many cities as well as work on the restoration of an old church in the Rimeti Monastery in Transylvania. He will be staying in Port Elisabeth for the duration of the exhibition.

ALGOA SUN  -  April 8, 1999