Nicodim Gallery is pleased to present the Romanian artist Maxim Liulca’s first solo exhibition in the US- "FLAGS”
The evolution of abstract art has been a series of responses to the experience of life in the 20th and 21st centuries. As Halley argues in a brilliant 1991 essay, abstraction before World War II was largely inspired by the utopian belief that rational technocracy (i.e., socialism) would create a better world. The technocratic ideal found its most powerful symbol not in the rosy-cheeked workers of Socialist Realism but in geometric abstraction. After the devastation of World War II and the revelation of the horrors of Stalinist Russia, geometry could no longer function as an image of utopia. Changing polarity, it became instead a symbol of alienation.
How do we make sense of all this activity in a type of art that was declared dead 40 years ago? The most useful way to understand abstraction is not in terms of its formal evolution but in terms of thematic content. The formal qualities of an abstract painting or sculpture are significant not in themselves but as part of the work’s expressive message.
Born in Moldova, 1987, the artist currently lives and works in Cluj, Romania.
Selected recent exhibitions include “ Bloom”- SpazioA Pistoia, Italy, “Paintings” – Baril Cluj, Romania, “Bright Little Things”-Strabag Kunstforum, Vienna.
