marieta chirulescu
1974, Sibiu, Romania
Marieta Chirulescu’s work is the result of an ongoing preoccupation with the aesthetic and conceptual contingencies of painting. The abstractions for which she is best known reference the formalism of Color Field painting, superimposed with the array of digital printing methods available to the public today. Drawing from an extensive archive of imagery, Chirulescu uses scans, screen shots and the technical irregularities that occur throughout digital processes to alter personal photographs as well as those taken by her father during the Romanian dictatorship. Through a rigorous process of technological reproduction and manipulation, she breaks down and erases images leaving only sediments and traces of the originals. Although Chirulescu eliminates most of the identifiable referents within her compositions, her pieces retain the rectilinear frame that conditions our way of seeing and understanding the world: a grid present in our daily life through windows, mirrors, houses or books, that inevitably ends up on the canvas. The subjects of her work are not the protagonists of the real world, but rather the afterimages and echoes of the “mechanical unconscious” of scanners and photocopy machines. Chirulescu sorts and rearranges scraps of visual information to produce images that disrupt, question and speculate on the character and function intrinsic to painting, while displaying their own production process.
Marieta Chirulescu studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg. She has been an artist in residency at the Villa Massimo at the Deutsche Akademie in Rome (2015), the Lenikus Collection (2012), and the Künstlerprogramm en Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Bucarest (2006). In 2008 she was the recipient of the Stiftung Kunstfonds grant in Bonn.
Marieta Chirulescu currently lives and works in Berlin.
Her most important exhibitions include: …what we are seeing we cannot say, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2020); Marieta Chirulescu, Foksal Gallery, Warsow (2019); Marieta Chirulescu, Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin (2017); Pale Fire, kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2016); CYTWOMBLY CYFONTI, Galleria Fonti, Naples, Italy (2016); Marieta Chirulescu, Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium (2015); Marieta Chirulescu, Kunsthalle Lingen, Germany (2014); Ileana, Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin (2013); Marieta Chirulescu, kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2013); Marieta Chirulescu, Meessen de Clercq, Brussels (2013); Marieta Chirulescu, Galleria Fonti, Naples, Italy (2012); Marieta Chirulescu, White Cube Bermondsey, London (2011); Marieta Chirulescu, Kunstverein, Albrecht Dürer Society, Nuremberg, Germany (2011); Works form the Martin Collection, Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany (2011); Marieta Chirulescu, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland. (2010); Marieta Chirulescu, Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany (2009); Marieta Chirulescu, Temporary project area, Kunsthalle, Berlin (2009).
Her work has also been included in various group exhibitions such as: Local talent, Sprüt Magers, Berlin (2020); Malerei aus der Kunstsammkung der Stadt Lingen, Kunsthalle Lingen, Germany (2017); THE GAP BETWEEN THE FRIDGE AND THE COOKER, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2017); #12 / Folies d’hiver, Villa Medici, Rome (2016); Image Support, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Germany (2016); HOW TO BE UNIQUE – Show 15, Sammlung Kienzle, Berlin (2016); Attention Economy, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2014); Artists against AIDS, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany (2014); Space, Museum Vasarely, Budapest, Hungary (2014); Nur was möglich ist ist möglich [Just what is possible is possible], Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2013); Everywhere and on Everything, kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2012); Minimal Myth, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2012); Made In Germany II, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2012); La preuve concrete/The Concrete Proof, CEEAC Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines, Strasbourg, France (2009); Painting (Malerei), Kohlenhof, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany (2005), among others.