How did I get here?-Vladimir Paun-Vrapciu

Exhibition: How did I get here?

Curators: Doina MÂNDRU, art critic; Ion ANGHEL, curator; Daniela DÂMBOIU, curator

Text provided by Dr. Daniela Dâmboiu

Architect and artist, with remarkable results in both creative areas, Vladimir PĂUN-VRAPCIU is in full ascending of his artistic capacity. 

As an architect, “if the architect is the noble variant of the constructor, Vladimir is for sure a builder and an architect, because many of his architectural projects are produced with his own physical work in the BAUHAUS style – what you design, you execute, thus you take architecture to the level of art.” (Bebe Țânțăreanu, writer) One of the architectural projects he had won was – in 2002/2003 (when he was a student in the last year of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest) – for the construction of a disadvantaged children’s settlement, a project organized by the Filantropic Foundation OAT FARM (Suceava), sponsored by Prince Charles, who was himself the chairman of the jury. Vladimir Păun’s architectural projects were selected for various annuals and biennials in the recent years (at the National Biennial of Architecture in Romania 2018, 2021, at the Florence Biennial Architecture Section 2022 etc.).

As a visual artist, he has traveled an impressive career so far, making his way in the world of art galleries in our country and abroad; personal exhibitions: “Connection in Brahma” (organized in Buzău, his hometown, in 2019, then at the Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2019), “The Space” (County Museum Buzău, 2021; Saphira & Ventura Gallery, New York, 2022; the Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2022), “How did I get here?” (Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2020; The Art Museum, Târgovişte, 2021) a.o.; participation at several international exhibitions: at the Florence Biennale (2019), Carrousel du Louvre, Paris (2019), Art Safari Pavilion, Bucharest (2019), Salerno Contemporary Art Biennial (2020), at the 70th edition of the Contemporary Drawing Biennial Osten from Skopje, Macedonia (2020, where he was selected from 250 artists who enrolled 819 artworks, and finally he was awarded the “Osten Prize” 2020; “this award has returned over time to artists like Pierre Sounges, Henry Moore, Oskar Kokoschka ....”), at the Florence Biennial Art and Design (2021, where he was awarded the “Best Artist”), at the Biennial International Art “Adriatica”, Barletta, Italy (2021) etc.

The exhibition we are opening today reflects the complexity of Vladimir Păun-Vrapciu’s creative artistic process. We perceive that his work in the last two years – during which the world seemed to be stuck due to the coronavirus pandemic – expresses his own experience; the artist “burst out” from his own isolation, in which he felt trapped, concerned by the question we find in the title of the exhibition. Some of his paintings appear to be pictorial collages, reflecting scenes that marked him deeply at one point, as well as feelings and resentments that touched him; all these fragments form together complex compositions, full of symbols. From the viewer’s point of view, it is not easy to decipher the mix of clues and messages without discovering some “keys” and receiving some explanations. Of course that, as viewers, we recognize ourselves in the turmoil of the artist, and we feel challenged and engaged in asking ourselves the same question: “How did [we] get here?” / “How did society get here?” The coronavirus pandemic and the danger of the war near us demonstrate how fragile the existence of the human being is and that art is what will certify the presence of man on earth.