Victor Man (born 1974) is a Romanian-born artist and painter.
Career
In the late nineties, Victor Man enrolled as a student at the Academia de Arte Plastice Ioan Andreescu,
Cluj
Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...
, but left after two years in order to study in Jerusalem between 2000 and 2004. While in Jerusalem, he lived at the
Poor Clares
The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare (Latin language, Latin: ''Ordo Sanctae Clarae''), originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and also known as the Clarisses or Clarissines, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Or ...
' Convent (), and during this time mainly painted from nature inside of the monastery garden. Man returned to Cluj in 2004 and finished his Bachelor of Fine Arts.
From 2005 onward his method of painting changed radically, from the previous observational '
au premier coup' paintings, executed during his study years in Jerusalem, to more conceptually charged paintings, produced through a slow and methodical process.
Victor Man received the 2014
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.
...
Artist of the Year award, followed by a solo exhibition at the
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, which traveled further to
Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, and
Haus der Kunst
The ''Haus der Kunst'' (, ''House of Art'') is a museum for modern and contemporary art in Munich, Bavaria. It is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. It was built between 1933 an ...
, Munich.
In 2007 he represented Romania at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
, together with the artists Cristi Pogacean, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor.
In 2015 he contributed to the Venice Biennale a second time, when his work
was featured in the main exhibition, "All The World's Futures," curated by
Okwui Enwezor
Okwui Enwezor (23 October 1963 – 15 March 2019) was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history.
Enwezor served as artistic director of several major exhibitions, including Documenta11 (2002) and th ...
in the Central Pavilion.
In 2016, Galerie Neu in Berlin hosted an exhibition of Man's work.
Work, style
Man often has a preference for painting in dark colors, reminiscent of the work of 18th century landscape painters, who used
black mirror
''Black Mirror'' is a British anthology series, anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker. Most episodes are set in near-future dystopias containing Science fiction, sci-fi technology—a type of speculative fiction. The series i ...
s, also known as "Claude glasses," to turn colors into dark key tones.
["Victor Man"]
MUDAM Museum, Luxembourg
Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France on the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembour ...
. Re-accessed 24 June 2023. His works capture moods, offering the onlooker nothing but ambiguous, vague tracks, and leaving him or her in a haze.
[Morton, Tom]
"Shape Shifter"
frieze (magazine), ''Frieze'', Nov–Dec 2008, pp. 160–165.[ They also render a memory of images and objects made up of different layers of time, which appear to waver between disappearance and reminiscence. Victor Man’s highly personal poetics and the illustrative diversity of his output trace the outlines of an artistic world in which historical facts and subjective impressions coming from different worlds and periods are grounded.][ Man is said to be equally inspired by the ancient and the modern.
In his work he concentrates on the development of an autonomous iconography in which frequent literary references intermingle with his own biography. Literature and art history, collective memory and personal experience, are the elements woven together by the artist into a non-linear story where distinctions between present and past, fiction, imagination and reality are abolished.][Nastac, Simona. "Victor Man," Flash Art, Vol. XXXIX, No. 251, Nov–Dec 2006.]
Uncertainty and oscillation between gender find an echo in other forms of transition: from human to animal, organic to artificial, face to mask. This overlapping of points of reference runs throughout all his works, where the fusion of occult, gender, androgyny, or, more generally, the uncertainty of physiognomy and appearance form a recurrent theme that strengthens the image of an identity in perpetual movement and suggests how rich and mysterious the essence of things can be beyond their appearance. The paintings never provide explanations, but hints and suggestions that leave the viewer with the feeling that a reversal of all meanings is always possible.[
]
Art market
Man has been represented by David Zwirner Gallery (since 2024), Gladstone Gallery and Galerie Max Hetzler.
Public collections
* Stadel Museum, Frankfurt
*TATE Modern, London
* Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
* Mudam, MUDAM, Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg[
* GAMeC Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
* Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
* San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SFMOMA Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
* Centre International d'art et du Paysage de l'ile de Vassiviere
* National Museum of Contemporary Art (Romania), MNAC, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest ]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Man, Victor
Romanian painters
1974 births
Living people
21st-century Romanian painters
Romanian artists