Opening: Sorin Campan

Fri Jun 25 2021 at 06:00 pm to 08:00 pm

Galeria Plan B | Berlin

Opening: Sorin Campan
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Sorin Campan
Opening June 25, 18 – 20 h
June 25 – July 31, 2021
Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 18 h
Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin
Galeria Plan B is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Sorin Campan with the gallery, opening Friday, June 25.
Dream from the night of 2/3 March 2021
I was preparing Sorin Câmpan’s exhibition. It had more works than I expected and they were already displayed in two places, two caves very far away one from the other. They were semi-obscure but reachable places, dimly lit by the daylight penetrating the mountain’ cracks and slantingly projecting on the walls. Neatly arranged there, the works have picked up as by imitation the color of the stone, were painted in greys and light earthy shades, and their compositions surprisingly had many characters that seemed to tell together a simple story from the beginning of humankind. All humans were painted the same way, caught in motion, small in relation to the frame of the painting. In the second cave I met Andrei Câmpan, the son of the artist, who came to help me with the exhibition; Andrei tells me he want to show me something special and we enter a room in the mountain where there is a great carpet on the floor, also grey and old, perfectly hidden in the semi-obscurity. The pattern of the carpet looks like a moss that has parasitized its surface; Andrei picks it up and we fix it together on the wall of the cave, then stand back to watch. Over the grown muscle Câmpan senior had painted this time a few objects, all of them small and geometrical, a kind of precious boxes having a surprising, illogical chromatic and dimensional relation one with the other and that persisting watching made them ever more visible on the mass of the carpet. We were watching them, they were getting colored. We stopped focusing, they became hidden again. When they got colored they started slowly to have a yellow outline. But one second of inattention was enough for the yellow to fade back in the cement-like grey of the cave.
Translated from Romanian by Ciprian Șiulea
Sorin Câmpan's works reach an apparent simplicity after performing a series of detours and a nuanced reflection upon the painting instruments; they have to be carefully “read” in order to be understood in their enigmatic composition: under the appearance of simple images – still lives, nocturnal landscapes, streets in Cluj – the mystery is localized and spotted, without being actually translated or explained. As in the metaphysical painting that is particularly appealing to Câmpan, mysterious street corners seem to be captured at the same moment of the day and in the same light. Besides the balanced combination of the obvious and the mysterious which is always surprising, the quality of painting – the extreme simplification of the often extravagant chromatic means and combinations – recommend Câmpan as a remarkable artist. The geometry of his works has an almost hypnotic effect upon the viewer and seems to perfectly fit the chromatic extravaganza; the painter achieves images that display an oneiric potential by using minimal technical means. At a close look one gets the feeling of being faced with spaces that are familiar but impossible to be located or identified and the viewer is the one asked to “solve” the mystery. If we could talk about an affluence of artists situated in our close vicinity whose art continues to speak to us, we can definitely count Sorin Câmpan among them. Neither the size, nor the number of his works is what really recommends him, let alone a particular social visibility (Câmpan remains quasi unknown even to people sharing the same field of interest) but the authentic, uninhibited relationship he has established with the medium of painting. We are in fact talking about a relationship which can be recognized but never mimed/faked.
Mihai Pop
Sorin Câmpan, born 1940, in Humoreni, Romania, lives in Cluj. Graduated in 1968 from the "Ion Andreescu" Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj. From 1990 to 2001 teached the Drawing and colour study course at the University of Art and Design in Cluj - Department of Photographic Art and Video. From 1968 to 2019 participated in the Annual Salon of the Fine Artists Union (UAP) Cluj. In 1969 participated in the collective exhibition organized by UAP - the national branch - in Turin, then at the Biennale in Bucharest (1970), the Comemorativa 1850 in Cluj (1974), etc. Previous solo exhibitions include: Arad (1977), Cluj (Galeria Mica in 1971 and in 1975, at the "Filo" Gallery in 1976 and in 1979, the IMF Gallery in 1978, the Linguistic Institute Gallery in 1989, the Design Hall of the Polytechnic Institute in 1990, Time and place at the Galeria Plan B in 2010). The most recent exhibitions of Sorin Câmpan are: Campan & Campani - Art in the Family, Romanian Cultural Institute, Venice, 2018 (in which he exhibited with his family), artist guest in Mircea Cantor's exhibition CHASSEUR D'IMAGES at Musée de la Chasse et Nature, Paris, 2019, and the solo exhibition La lune et autre chose at Galerie Hussenot in Paris, 2020.
The event takes place in compliance with current hygiene measures.
For more information, please contact the gallery at [email protected] and +49.30.39805236.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Galeria Plan B, Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin, Germany, Berlin

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