National Museum of Art Timisoara presents the exhibition “De Anima” signed by the artist Gheorghe Fikl
The National Museum of Art Timisoara is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition “De Anima” signed by Gheorghe Fikl, an artist who has distinguished himself as one of the most important contemporary Romanian painters of the last three decades. The opening will take place on Wednesday, December 4, at 18:00, in the Baroque Hall.
“The exhibition borrows the famous title of Aristotle’s treatise on the soul. For the philosopher, the soul is a principle of life and movement of living beings. A vital, sensory and intellectual principle. Elements that also guide the works in this exhibition where the living body inhabits the constructed body, where the animal and the baroque, nature and culture meet in bizarre symbioses. Gheorghe Fikl proposes in this exhibition a critical and ironic look at our world in the Anthropocene, at our becoming animal, in absurd scenes that seem to be taken from dreams, realized in a powerful painting, with neo-expressionist touches, which draws its sap from the exuberance and excesses of the Baroque”, says curator Horea Avram.
This reference to the opulence of the Baroque style is reflected in the relationship between the visceral monumentality of the artist’s work and the grandeur of the architectural space of the Baroque Palace and Hall, emphasizing the transition of this space into contemporaneity, without losing its plastic identity.
Born in 1968 in Timișoara, Gheorghe Fikl studied fine arts at the universities of Cluj and Timișoara, with Romul Nuțiu as his teacher. His early works were multimedia experiments and installations, realized through random juxtapositions of found objects, photographic insertions, painting and collage. These Dadaist-inspired explorations gradually evolved into Baroque-inspired figurative painting, with eerie and surreal compositions that intrigue and unsettle the viewer. Animals take center stage, becoming bizarre characters – herds of sheep in sumptuous parlors, phallic bulls beneath glittering chandeliers or peacocks wandering through peasant houses with collapsed ceilings revealing the wide sky – all of which became his unmistakable visual trademark. His favorite themes include loneliness, memory, the conflict between the carnal and the spiritual, violence and the tension between historical and personal time.
His works are in private and public collections in Romania and abroad, including the collection of King Charles III of Great Britain. Throughout his career, he has had successful exhibitions in Timisoara, Bucharest, London, Luxembourg, New York and Lisbon. Gheorghe Fikl lives and works in Timisoara and Socolari, where he has created a unique artistic space that brings together people from different fields around art and creativity.
“De Anima” is part of the series of events dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Timiș Bar Association. The Timisoara Chamber of Attorneys was established on January 25, 1875, and the exhibition will mark this special moment on January 25, 2025, during the festivities organized by the Timis Bar Council.