Ecaterina Vrana
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2016
Ecaterina Vrana: A Woman Without Secrets
Installation View
Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, 2017
Ecaterina Vrana
Red Princess With Black Snowmen, 2015
oil on canvas
70.75 x 86.5 in
180 x 220 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
The Kiss, 2015
oil on canvas
70.75 x 86.5 in
180 x 220 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Crying a Lake, 2015
oil on canvas
70.75 x 90.5 in
180 x 230 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Wine, 2015
oil on canvas
43.25 x 55 in
110 x 140 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Wine, 2015
(detail)
Ecaterina Vrana
Water on Mars, 2015
oil on canvas
70.75 x 86.5 in
180 x 220 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Shoe Knife, 2015
oil on canvas
70.75 x 86.5 in
180 x 220 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Shoe Knife, 2015
(detail)
Ecaterina Vrana
Omul Negru, 2016
oil on canvas
82.5 x 70.75 in
210 x 180 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
The Sprinklers Face to Face, 2017
oil on canvas
70.75 x 82.75 in
180 x 210 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Mendel and the Sprinkler Lady, 2017
oil on canvas
70.75 x 82.5 in
180 x 210 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Tears of Life, 2017
oil on canvas
74.75 x 82.5 in
190 x 210 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Princess with Black Sheep, 2017
oil on canvas
63 x 78.75 in
160 x 200 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Self Portrait with Purple Door, 2015
oil on canvas
55 x 78.75 in
140 x 200 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Red Countess with Green Lips, 2015
oil on canvas
55 x 47.25 in
140 x 120 cm
Ecaterina Vrana
Red Countess with Green Lips, 2015
(detail)
Ecaterina Vrana
Champagne, 2016
oil on canvas
47.25 x 55 in
120 x 140 cm
Ecaterina Vrana (1969–2019) was born in Constanta and studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Bucharest. Recent exhibitions include Ecaterina Vrana: A Woman Without Secrets, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2017, solo); The Scythe was a Chick, Museum of Art, Constanța, Romania (2015); Funeraria, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2011); Bladly Happy: Pain, Pleasure and Panic in Recent Romanian Art, The Performance Art Institute, San Francisco (2011) and The Bear’s Dance, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2010). Vrana's works have been exhibited in public and private collections in Romania, Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and the US.
The air in Ecaterina Vrana’s exhibition partakes heavily of oil odors. Like many other contemporary painters, she applies copious quantities of paint in various ways, slathering it like Spackle, squeezing it out in toothpaste-like ropes, engraving it, and stippling it into bas-relief blobs. Unlike some who ice canvases with the goal of creating paintings as brightly hued and tantalizing as cupcakes, Vrana channels paint’s corporeality into somber scenes whose caliginous atmospheres seem to recede far into space.
Ecaterina Vrana’s paintings at Nicodim Gallery are striking in their idiosyncrasy. The Romanian artist handles paint like frosting, depicting dream-like scenarios dominated by women and snowmen, birds and fish, and lots of blood-red tears. The world they inhabit is by turns humorous and dark but wonderfully mysterious.
