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Victor Man

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Victor Man (born 1974) is a Romanian-born artist and painter.

Career

In the late nineties, Victor Man enrolled as a student at the Academia de Arte Plastice Ioan Andreescu, Cluj, but left after two years in order to study in Jerusalem between 2000 and 2004. While in Jerusalem, he lived at the Poor Clares' Convent (Monastère de Sainte Claire [he]), and during this time mainly painted from nature inside of the monastery garden. Man returned to Cluj in 2004 and finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts.

From 2005 onward his method of painting changed radically, from the previous observational 'au premier coup' paintings, executed during his study years in Jerusalem, to more conceptually charged paintings, produced through a slow and methodical process.

Victor Man received the 2014 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year award, followed by a solo exhibition at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, which traveled further to Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, and Haus der Kunst, Munich.

In 2007 he represented Romania at the Venice Biennale, together with the artists Cristi Pogacean, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor.

In 2015 he contributed to the Venice Biennale a second time, when his work was featured in the main exhibition, "All The World's Futures," curated by Okwui Enwezor in the Central Pavilion.

In 2016, Galerie Neu in Berlin hosted an exhibition of Man's work.

Work, style

Man often has a preference for painting in dark colors, reminiscent of the work of 18th century landscape painters, who used black mirrors, also known as "Claude glasses," to turn colors into dark key tones. His works capture moods, offering the onlooker nothing but ambiguous, vague tracks, and leaving him or her in a haze. They also render a memory of images and objects made up of different layers of time, which appear to waver between disappearance and reminiscence. Victor Man’s highly personal poetics and the illustrative diversity of his output trace the outlines of an artistic world in which historical facts and subjective impressions coming from different worlds and periods are grounded. Man is said to be equally inspired by the ancient and the modern.

In his work he concentrates on the development of an autonomous iconography in which frequent literary references intermingle with his own biography. Literature and art history, collective memory and personal experience, are the elements woven together by the artist into a non-linear story where distinctions between present and past, fiction, imagination and reality are abolished. Uncertainty and oscillation between gender find an echo in other forms of transition: from human to animal, organic to artificial, face to mask. This overlapping of points of reference runs throughout all his works, where the fusion of occult, gender, androgyny, or, more generally, the uncertainty of physiognomy and appearance form a recurrent theme that strengthens the image of an identity in perpetual movement and suggests how rich and mysterious the essence of things can be beyond their appearance. The paintings never provide explanations, but hints and suggestions that leave the viewer with the feeling that a reversal of all meanings is always possible.

Art market

Man has been represented by David Zwirner Gallery (since 2024), Gladstone Gallery and Galerie Max Hetzler.

Public collections

References

  1. Van den Boogerd, Dominic. “Out of the Cold: On Victor Man’s Work of Restraint,” Art Papers, January/February 2008, pp.22-25. http://gladstonegallery.com/sites/default/files/10_ArtPapers_JanFeb08_0.pdf
  2. "Dark Metamorphoses: Victor Man is Artist of the Year 2014" http://db-artmag.de/en/80/feature/dark-metamorphoses-victor-man-is-artist-of-the-year-2014/
  3. "Low-Budget Monuments: The Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale" http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/low-budget-monuments-the-romanian-pavilion-at-the-venice-biennale/
  4. "Venice: Victor Man at The Central Pavilion" http://www.artwritingdaily.com/2015/05/venice-victor-man-at-central-pavilion.html
  5. Galerie Neu, Victor Man, April – June, 2016.
  6. ^ "Victor Man", MUDAM Museum, Luxembourg. Re-accessed 24 June 2023.
  7. ^ Morton, Tom. "Shape Shifter", Frieze, Nov–Dec 2008, pp. 160–165.
  8. ArtWorks: The Deutsche Bank global art program, "Victor Man—Zephyr 'Artist of the Year,' 2014", Mar 21 – Jun 22, 2014.
  9. Rabottini, Alessandro. "Plural Solitude," Map, Issue 1, Autumn 2007, p. 36–41.
  10. ^ Nastac, Simona. "Victor Man," Flash Art, Vol. XXXIX, No. 251, Nov–Dec 2006.
  11. Watson, Simon. "New Artist: Victor Man," Whitewall, No. 6, Sum 2007, p. 64
  12. Alex Greenberger (2 October 2024), David Zwirner Adds ‘Quintessentially European’ Painter Victor Man to Its Roster ARTnews.
  13. "Zéphir (Hommage à Lautréamont)". Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  14. "Victor Man. On relative loneliness | GAMeC". www.gamec.it. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  15. "Interventie #8 Victor Man - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen". www.boijmans.nl. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  16. "Victor Man". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  17. "CENTRE INTERNATIONAL D'ART ET DU PAYSAGE DE L'ILE DE VASSIVIERE". www.ciapiledevassiviere.com. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  18. "Untitled".
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