about — TRAIAN CHERECHES

Born 6 of May 1989
Bucharest, Romania
Lives and works between Bruxelles and Bucharest

Artist statement

My practice focuses on the multiple mutations in today’s natural, social, and subjective environments, adopting an interdisciplinary process entailing drawing, painting, sculpture, sound. Plasticity of matter lies at the core of my practice. My interest reveals the complexity of physical and self-expressive matter, employing a creative process that combines fragments of inner and objective reality. The transformed surfaces of my work draw inspiration from organic structures and artifacts, referencing the idea of accumulated waste that represents the current state of our polluted, consumptive world. In my work, new life forms emerge from destructive processes leading to vertiginous assemblages, collapse- equilibrium sculptures, micro-temples, subterranean ecosystems exploring potentiality and renewal. I recover matter, residues, personal archeology, childhood objects rebirthed into new (non)bodies.

Through unearthings and reconfigured forms, what interests me is to explore that specific cycle of creation and destruction by storing and revealing the remains of our consumer society. By employing sound, I wish to reintroduce the dimension of profound temporality in my works. Approaching this from a shamanic and ritualistic perspective, I create a body of rhythms that incorporates and records my own breathing, the creation of ceremonial chants, and electro-acoustic music. The function of sound is to create an immersive environment whereby the repetition emphasizes primal ritualistic elements, surfacing out a visceral and holistic component.

All the organic/inorganic materials I accumulate are covered by a synthetic membrane; a plastic skin. I intend to create works that take the form of hybrid objects, meta-structures that expand the medium of painting, sculpture, and sound while echoing a familiar and unfamiliar space. In touch with mass-cultural, technological processes, personal and cultural contexts, my works are remains of a contaminated universe, evoking the Adornian ‘negative space’.

Bio

Traian Cherecheș (b.1989) is a visual artist living and working between Bucharest and Paris. By examining the limits between natural exploration and extraction, his investigation into the current age of extinction surfaces out powerful, symbolic approaches to the body, volcano, and ritual. His work emerges from an interdisciplinary process using drawing, painting, sculpture, and sound to translate concerns about the multiple transformations in today’s world. In 2019 he participated in the 64th edition of Salon de Montrouge, Paris. His tracks and experimental soundscapes have been released on labels such as Archipel, Fabric Records London, and Cocoon Recordings. Together with Matei Tulbure they form the music project "TC Studio". Recent exhibitions include “Out of the Blue” at MARe (Museum of Recent Art), Bucharest, and (UN)EARTHINGS at Atelier 35 together with Bogdan Ghiu, Florin Flueras, curated by Horatiu Lipot.

Studies

2008-2009 University of Lancaster, Fine Arts, Painting, England
2009-2012 National University of Arts, Bucharest, Fine Arts, Painting, Class of Lect. Univ. Dr. George Moscal.

Member of the Artists Union Romania

Member of Maison des Artistes

Salon de Montrouge 2019

Sarah Ihler-Meyer

An alchemist who draws inspiration from video games and science fiction, Traian Cherecheș aims to capture living forces, using something between a creative and destructive process, one of contraction and expansion, metamorphosis and transmutation.

Everything starts with drawings the artist uses to tap into his subconscious. These contain an entanglement of lines, curves, and spirals evoking things that range from a vortex to intestines to skeletons and unknown creatures. From these sketches, which are artworks in their own right, the artist designs hybrid objects composed of expansive polyurethane foam and armed with metal or wooden structures, which are then covered in different layers of oil or gouache paint with the help of paint brushes and spray guns. This makes for animated and textured surfaces, at once eruptive and suffering erosion. With their valleys and ridges, these “sculpture-paintings” are organic and synthetic, carnal and mechanical. They seem to grab our attention before drowning it in the confusion of their scale, which is somewhere between microcosm and macrocosm in their linking of our terrestrial and cosmic realities. Not without a certain violence, these “objects” sometimes take the shape of wheels bearing visible metal fragments, as if the artist had summoned what Theodor W. Adorno called “negativity,” or the contradiction and dissonances of instrumental reason. Though certain figurative ressemblances appear here and there, it is another deeper ressemblance that is at work in the works of Traian Cherecheș. The latter is not carried out through the use of a prior code, but more sensually, through the sensation of the double movement of forming and deforming material, like windows onto chaos.

Exhibitions

2011 / Exploration, Noaptea alba a galeriilor 4, TC Studio, personal exhibition, Bucharest, Romania, personal exhibition

2011 / Atelier în tranziţie 4, Noaptea alba a galeriilor 5, Bucharest, Romania,collective exhibition

2011 / UNARTE'011, University of Arts: George Enescu, Iasi, group exhibition

2012 / UNARTE'012, Museum of Art, Cluj Napoca, group exhibition

2012 / Graduation Exhibition, Constantin Brancusi salon, Casa Poporului Bucharest, group exhibition

2014 / LABORNA Gallery ,BORNA 11, Bucharest, group exhibition

2014 / Catapetesme, Dan Haulica homage, Putna Monastery, personal exhibition

2015-2016 / Spirit si Solidaritate, Galeria Dialog, Bucharest, group exhibition

2016 / Catapetesme, Jecza Gallery, Timisoara, Romania, personal exhibition

2017/ Black Paintings,Romanian National Library (BNAR), Bucharest, personal exhibition

2019 /64th Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge City Hall, collective exhibition

2019 /Lvcis et Umbre, Bucharest, Yojik Auditorium, Bucharest, Romania, personal exhibition in collaboration with Radu Bodiu sound compositions

2019 /Gesturing towards solitude, Bucharest, Romania, Halucinarium Gallery, collective exhibition

2020/”Storage Moods”, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, collective exhibition

2020/“Out of the Blue”, MARe (Museum of Recent Art), contemporary art acquisition, collective exhibition

2021/ (UN)EARTHINGS Atelier 35, Bucharest, Romania, personal exhibition together with Bogdan Ghiu, Florin Flueras curated by Horatiu Lipot

2021/ “All Becoming Medium” Romania Cultural Institute, Budapesta, personal exhibition in collaboration with Bogdan Ghiu (upcoming)

2021/“Prix Antoine Marin 24eme”, Paris, France, collective exhibition

2021/ Art Encounters 2021 - Contemporary Art Biennial, Our Other Us -Secret Wing curated by Maria Rus Bojan and Bogdan Ghiu collective exhibition, Timisoara, Romania

2021/ Art Encounters 2021 - Contemporary Art Biennial, Our Other Us - Landscape in a Convex Mirror, curated by Mihnea Mircan, collective exhibition, Timisoara, Romania

Sound Portfolio

2011 /Skatemas, TC Studio Live, ARMA 17, Moscow, Russia

2011 /Do Easy Records, 3 Years Party, TC Studio Live, Vienna, Austria

2011 /Vibecast Sessions#112-Live@ VibeFM Romanian,TC Studio Live, Bucharest, Romania

2012 /Rhythmatic presents All Inn Records with Nastia, TC Studio & Polarize at Shutter Studios, London, United Kingdom

2012/Fuse presents Maceo Plex & TC Studio- Down Under at Fuse / Brussels, Belgium

2013/Nocturnal Collective, alternative exhibition space Caimatei 10, part of the „Dark Matters project” by Calup, Soundscape for Lea Rasovsky, Bucharest, Romania

2013/Jazzulescu la Kretzulescu, Traian Chereches & Bonjour Bonsoir Live, Humanitas Library, Bucharest, Romania

2014/Anda Livia Art Club, Traian Chereches & Bonjour Bonsoir Live, Bucharest, Romania

2019 /Art Encounters Biennale Party, Traian Chereches Dj set, Jecza Gallery, Timisoara, Romania

2019 /Redeeming the time, Bucharest, Halucinarium Gallery, Traian Chereches & Bonjour Bonsoir Live, Bucharest, Romania