New Hope by Roman Tolici

Elements from devastated landscapes, a reflection on the major transformations that have redefined the contemporary world are rendered in paintings by Roman Tolici. The new works by the Basarabian artist are on show at Mobius Gallery in Amzei Square from 28 March to 31 May.

“New Hope” brings together works made over the last four years. Exploring the relationship between humans and Earth’s history, the exhibition becomes a concrete space built on both human vulnerability and resilience in a time when physical and spiritual limits are constantly being challenged.

The artist says: “History offers countless examples where hope has proved vain: empires have collapsed, terrible disasters have shattered people’s hope, and terrible injustices have gone unpunished. Yet hope has always stubbornly stubbornly resurfaced. This new series explores precisely this abstract and fragile feeling we call hope.”

Accelerated changes

Typically, socio-political paradigm shifts unfold slowly, over large time lapses, allowing humanity to absorb them gradually. There are, however, scenarios in human history where major changes have occurred abruptly, following unexpected events that have made it impossible to integrate them, thus generating collective trauma.
The last four years have been marked by a series of such unpredictable events, which have generated rapid transformations with a profound impact on everyday life. In this context, Roman Tolici’s works capture moments of uncertainty, adaptation and the search for a new equilibrium.

‘The new hope that Roman Tolici invokes in his paintings may be a paradoxical concept, which contains from the outset the boundless but slightly dreamlike horizon of a “healed” planet and a ’proper” humanity, but also the undeniable limits of a projection fractured by the reality on the ground – the terrain of imagination contaminated by apocalyptic scenarios and visible existential tensions. Tolici brings into the scenography of his recent paintings elements increasingly carefully drawn from the register of devastated landscapes, of an accelerated extinction of nature, of the Capitalocene or Petro-Capitalism. […] Painting is, therefore, hope, and the act of painting is the activation of a whole arsenal of survival strategies”, explains Diana Marincu, art critic and curator.

Itinerant exhibition

The exhibition ‘New Hope’ is a travelling project aimed at bringing contemporary art closer to diverse communities. It started in Brasov, continued in Timisoara and is travelling to Bucharest, Sibiu, and Tulcea.

The opening at Mobius is scheduled for 28 March at 18:00. After that, the exhibition is open from Wednesday to Saturday between 16:00 and 20:00.