At new gallery, new protagonists. It is under this sign that Anne-Sarah Bénichou inaugurates her space of the Chapon street with the paintings of Florin Ștefan, Romanian artist who lives and works in Cluj, the "other" artistic capital of Romania. This city located in the heart of historical Transylvania has become known in recent years by what some call it "school of painting", a bit like we speak of Leipzig.

The opportunity, offered by Anne-Sarah Bénichou to exhibit for the first time in France, will definitely sign for Florin Ștefan the beginning of an ascension career as his paintings testify to a certain talent and rare pictorial qualities. The artist constructs a figurative and narrative painting that gives the impression of reinventing, with enchantment, as much an internal kitchen of the modernity as to find a normality of the subject. It is important to remember that History has not spared this region of the world and that the crossing of the desert in recent years has been tirelessly punctuated by references to the tragic events and negative figures that have marked the country over several generations. Ștefan is one of the first to have freed the weight of the past and to invest body and soul in a present that is not trivial but is punctuated by his doubts, his worries, and especially a fight too good with himself only with painting. All his works underline this confrontation with the challenges of intimacy and this tugging that does not spare reflection as the spring of the rebound.

The artist puts in stage scenes of interior and gender, portraits, nudes and landscapes. Choosing his subjects is first of all a dialogue with painting. His gaze is surprised by what the eye of his camera is recording daily. He allows to slowly mature certain images and then transpose them to another scale and with other dispositions where colour and matter are used with happiness.

The female figures are prevailing in Florin Ștefan’s work, they are seating, leaning, in front of a mirror, washing or in bed, they all reflect the instant, the desire that arises or wanes, the attraction. Artworks, in turn, daring with audacity of framing, richness of the tons, the choice of subject. This gaze on the elements, the loved ones, on what surrounds him, Florin Ștefan transposes it with temper through colour, light, matter. His art is the intimate expression of sensation, the confusion of the world. He underlines this melee with colour but also the complexity of his sensibility.

‹ ›