Dan Maciuca
b. 1979, Romania
Dan Maciuca is a contemporary artist living and working in Cluj-Naoca, Romania. He was awarded his BA in 2002 and his MA in 2006, both for painting at the Univeristy of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He pursued further studies, being awarded a PhD in 2013 at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He has exhibited his work extensively in Romania and has garnered an international audience, exhibiting solo shows in Taipei, Romania, the UK. He has also exhibited various group shows both in Europe.
Maciuca’s compositions are composed of strong emotional responses to living life in a contemporary age. He has stated that he does not view his work as criticism or political, but rather as an empirically expressive and poetic reaction to events and parts of his life. Maciuca’s compositions communicate with the audience through an abstract expressionist language coalesced with figurative painting. He paints figures within urban landscapes, often evoking an essence of unpredictability and phantasmagoria that underlines the deeper metaphorical meanings of freedom, dreams, religion in the present day. Maciuca draws inspiration from the simplified and minimalist nature of contemporary architecture. The geometric formations and mathematical acknowledgements convey an artistic harmony, acting as a buffer amidst the chaotic neo-expressionistic characteristics that his painted figures embody.
Maciuca employs thick gestural impasto brushwork to form his urban landscapes and silhouetted figures. Unidentifiable and yet strangely familiar, these figures and places navigate the compositions just as we navigate our lives, Mauciuca states “I try to express the expressivity of the abandonment, neglect, and disadvantages of certain social strata”. The beauty of Maciuca’s abstractions lies in their sincerity and honesty regarding its subject matter. Dream-like, eerie, and sombre, these descriptions set the tone for Maciuca’s artistic oeuvre, relatable abstractions that accurately grasp the struggles, worries and anxieties he as a person has experienced.