The city’s nostalgia for lost gardens.
Ștefan Ungureanu (b. 1984) and George Anghelescu (b. 1985) are both from Bucharest. They, as most of us, are urban beings dislocated from The Garden of Earthly Delights by artifice and culture, tradition and history. As such, both exhibit the obligatory urban reflex: a hyper-symbolism born out of nostalgia for the unknown, for the natural and for the knowledge hidden beyond the range of experience. Out of this sense of lusting for faraway places of wonder, they try to retrieve through art the treasures of their curiosity; they strive to put some order in their modern and schizoid way of life by gluing back with colours the split personality of the secular citizenship we share.
Curated by Dan Popescu, “Wonderlust” brought George Anghelescu and Ștefan Ungureanu to Pragovka Gallery in Prague, opening on 16 September 2019. The programme also included Showcase Bucharest, a presentation of the Bucharest art scene given by the curator.
The exhibition text describes the two Bucharest artists as urban beings dislocated from the Garden of Earthly Delights, with a hyper-symbolic reflex born of nostalgia for the unknown. Through colour, they try to retrieve the treasures of their curiosity and glue back together the split personality of modern life.