May 8 to May 29, 2000
Opening Reception Thursday, May 3, 6-9 PM

Gallery 49 is pleased to announce the first US exhibition of two of the most intriguing and highly innovative artists of contemporary avant-garde in Romania - Marian and Victoria Zidaru. Tthe exhibition will feature wood and bronze sculptures, mixed-media installations, drawings on paper, canvas and water lily leafs as well as video performances exploring the angelic figure as the agent of divine will described in the prophetic and apocalyptic literature of the Old and New Testament. Curated by Magda Carneci, Romanian art historian, critic and author of "Art of the 1980's in Eastern Europe", the exhibition opens with a public reception on Saturday, May 6. Magda Carneci will be in attendance and available for interviews until May 12.

Visionaries and experimenters, orthodox believers and aesthetic pioneers, Marian and Victoria Zidaru have exemplified, since the beginning of the 1990's, the uncommon and difficult case in contemporary art of the artist-prophet for whom aesthetic form is ultimately the carrier and revealer of divine message and mystic revelation. Their entire artistic creation, which in fact is nothing but a "camouflage" of the true messianic objective, opens for dialogue the critical question of what is the role of art and the artist at the beginning of the 21st century. By means of complex symbolic installations comprised of sculptures, drawings, and narrative performances, as well as through self-financed projects such as the publication of religious newspapers and books, Zidaru family has elaborated an ambitious and coherent program aiming to create a new artistic paradigm where it is impossible to separate the aesthetic experience from spiritual participation and prophetic discourse. This radical program puts into play the rich Early Christian iconography and parables coming especially from the Old Testament, juxtaposed in a surprising and expressive way with stylistic and technical features pertaining to very diverse fields such as conceptualism and local folk art, modernist abstraction and postmodern neo-expressionism, video technology and rural craftsmanship, Byzantine hieratism and vernacular kitsch. The result is an entirely new definition of the institutionalized mechanism of art: the artworks emerge as pages from a prophetic book, the gallery space turns into a preaching tribune, while the viewing public becomes an ad-hoc congregation. As Magda Carneci remarks, "I believe that we are in front of a phenomenon of original cultural synthesis that could be compared - proportionally speaking - to the one that Brancusi dared propose to the artistic community at the beginning of the last century, courageously blending the archaic sensitivity and his will to employ avant-garde forms. In the same vein, Marian Zidaru has tried to accomplish an unexpected triple synthesis out of the rural, the orthodox and the modern / postmodern layers of Romanian culture." ( Bucharest, National Museum of Art. Zidaru. Exh. Cat.)

Marian and Victoria Zidaru's works have been widely exhibited in prestigious European institutions, such as Ludwig Museum in Aachen and the National Museum of Art in Bucharest, and were included in the most important survey shows of contemporary Romanian art in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. Critically recognized as one of the leading contemporary artists, Marian Zidaru has represented Romania at the 1995 Venice Biennial and the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1991, while one of his large scale sculptures is currently considered for acquisition by the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin. For additional information or visual material please contact Monica Rotaru at (212)767-0855.