Into Light and Shadow: Black & White Dialogues in Contemporary Romanian Art
Marius Bercea’s recent black and white oil drawings on paper emerge from a deeply personal interplay between photographic memory and painterly tradition. Rooted in his own archive of personal photographs, these works evoke a unique dialogue between the immediacy of the captured image and the contemplative act of painting. The monochrome palette, dominated by the densest black and the starkest whites, strips visual narrative to its essence. Significantly, Marius Bercea’s works resonate in profound dialogue with the black and white self-portraits of Iosif Kiraly, produced in the 1980s during the final years of Romania’s communist regime. Kiraly’s monochrome self-portraits are marked by an intense introspection and formal austerity, confronting themes of identity, isolation, and the weight of historical circumstance through the stark opposition of light and shadow. Executed within a socio-political context rich with repression and cultural constraint, these portraits embody a resistance through subtlety.
Three of Iosif Kiraly's self-portraits from the 1980s have been acquired this year by MoMA,NY affirming their significance not only within Romanian art history but also on a global scale, situating his work as a critical touchstone of late 20th-century Eastern European modernism.
Jecza Gallery has exhibited Marius Bercea in Bucharest in May 2025 in a solo show curated by Tevz Logar. Marius Bercea is working with Francois Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles, New York and MAKI Gallery in Tokyo. His works are included in the following collections (selection): ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, DenmarkHudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art [HVCCA], Peekskill, NY, USAKistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway MAKI Collection, Tokyo, Japan Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany Oketa Collection, Tokyo, Japan Space K Museum, Seoul, South Korea Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA, USA Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK