“Just Out of Reach,” Emma Păvăloaia’s second solo exhibition at IOMO Gallery
“Just Out of Reach,” Emma Păvăloaia’s second solo exhibition at IOMO Gallery, runs from June 18 to July 31.
“The exhibition begins at dinner,” explains Thom Oosterhof, guest curator at the Combinatul Fondului Plastic gallery. On an ordinary evening, reality begins to be overtaken by imagination. And what comes flooding in is everything at once: poverty, war, greed, angels, devils, the apartment blocks of the neighborhood where he grew up, and the anxiety that comes with living a twenty-minute walk from a NATO airbase.
The following paintings are in no way political. They are simply the thoughts of a woman on a quiet evening, allowed to take shape. The fact that they may seem political tells you everything you need to know.
Păvăloaia starts with ordinary things—a living room, a vase of flowers, a diamond (or is it a table?)—and transforms them into thresholds between the mundane and the metaphysical. She fondly recalls her old neighborhood, Blocuri, through a funerary statue. Nature comes to move her somewhere more sheltered. A guardian angel has been placed in a box for safekeeping. Present, yet inaccessible. A diamond sits on a plate. The Last Supper, as the artist calls it. The final act of a civilization that chose material wealth over spiritual wealth.
The devil appears several times. Not as a threat, but as a conversation partner. In one scene, Păvăloaia clinks glasses with him. He pours tar and flames over her. She pours holy water and basil on him. This is Romanian folk tradition in its most vivid form. Not the suppression of evil, but negotiation with it. Stepping on the devil’s tail is both a warning and an acceptance.
A question about art itself runs through all the works. Păvăloaia painted one of the pieces while reading de Chirico’s memoirs, imagining a postcard sent to him a century from now, in which she tells him that people continue to come to exhibitions in search of meaning, that transcendence remains forever just out of reach. It is the most sincere thing an artist can say. And in a country that is still grappling with the gap between what was promised and what has come to pass, it is also the most Romanian.
Emma Păvăloaia
About Emma Păvăloaia
Emma Păvăloaia (b. 1993, Câmpia Turzii) is a graduate of the University of Arts and Design in Cluj-Napoca, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in painting (2015 and 2018, respectively), followed by her Ph.D. in 2026. Her works explore liminal geographies, hypnotic, twilight landscapes suspended between the visible world and the supernatural realms of the psyche.
Selected solo exhibitions include “The Garden of Earthly Discontents” (IOMO Gallery, Bucharest, 2023) and “Sin Grows Strange in the Sky” (White Cuib, Cluj-Napoca, curated by Kassandra Mihai). Her works have been featured in group exhibitions at IOMO Gallery, Centrul de Interes (Cluj-Napoca), and Annart Gallery, among others.
“Just Out of Reach” is open to visitors Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Photo: Emma Păvăloaia, “Nature Guiding My Lonely Thoughts,” 2025
