Interview with Maria Bordeanu — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Konversationer installation view Rumänska kulturinstitutet 2025

https://www.mariabordeanu.com/

Maria Bordeanu was born in Bucharest in 1982 and she has got a MFA degree in Painting from UNARTE Bucharest since 2007. Her artistic interests revolve around photorealistic, figurative and cinematic themes subtly infused with elements of media culture, alongside dystopian elements and post-human visual metaphors. Maria has been represented by 418 Gallery (Munich-Cetate) since 2011, collaborating for several exhibitions and art fairs. In 2021 her work was selected for the London Art Biennale and in 2023 she was part of Arte Laguna Prize finalists exhibition at Arsenale in Venice. In 2024 she represented Romania at the Durres International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Albania with the installation "Mirrors". The Durres Biennale’s first edition theme was “AI: The Hybrid Future”.

She currently lives and works in Stockholm where she exhibited recent paintings at the "Konversationer" personal exhibition in 2024, at Rumänska Kulturinstitutet. Her work is part of the Contemporary Art Collection at the Brukenthal National Art Museum in Sibiu, Romania and various private collections.

Maria Bordeanu’s themes explore the way we look at the avalanche of images and information from the media, offering an alternative to reflect on what we see around us. The artist’s paintings explore the connection between natural elements and everyday life, involving memories which belong to a determined time and space. One of the artist’s upcoming projects in 2025 is a residency at Villa San Michele in Capri, Italy.

Maria, in your 2024 solo exhibition, “Konversationer”, you explored the interplay between Stockholm’s natural scenery, historical sculptures, and the human figure. How does this “conversation” evolve on your canvases, and what specific moments or elements of Stockholm have most profoundly influenced your work?

The local scenery led me to create works that are connected to nature. One can feel it closer even in the urban areas and water is always present in the background. The exhibition “Konversationer” at Rumänska kulturinstitutet in Stockholm brought together some of my recent themes related to the dialogue between nature and the human figure, interplayed with fragments of sculptures. Also, a large part of the works are depicting water and reflections, which transform the way we look at familiar things.

Nature is part of everyday life and one can always follow different paths along the water's edge. I could observe closely the gardens and a variety of sculptures that punctuate the landscape. I like that people can experience the waterscape both from a distance and up close, this offers a different understanding of space. Light plays an important role in our perception of the environment and it also brings people into the landscape. The seasonal changes are more delimited and this experience shapes the understanding of my surroundings and it is a base for more works to come.

You’ve mentioned the significant role of seasonal changes and light in shaping your work. How do you approach translating the ephemeral qualities of light and nature into your paintings, and how does this affect the emotional tone of your pieces?

Light plays a crucial role in how we perceive the elements around us and I’ve developed several works that follow the play of light over the water surface or shadows that trace shapes on a wall. For me, light is also a way of connecting to the environment and I become more aware about the way it shifts and changes and completely transforms the landscape. It has also the purpose of capturing a memory, a moment in time as I saw it.

As a figurative painter, translating the qualities of light into a painting is a nuanced process. I observe the way light interacts with the water waves or the leaves and how it and develops throughout the day. For me the changing light in nature is also about conveying a mood or an emotional experience. The qualities of light shape how I tell the story of a moment and it is about more than just representation—it’s about finding a way to convey an atmosphere, a feeling and the passage of time.

By integrating historical sculptures with contemporary landscapes in “Conversations”, you create a dialogue between past and present. What led you to choose these sculptures, and how do you think they help bridge historical and modern perspectives for the viewer?

As I work on a theme, it slowly starts to take a different direction. In recent “Conversations” paintings a monochrome blue invades the canvas, like a liquid medium transforming the historical sculptures present in the scene. This approach aims to bring them closer to the contemporary viewer and question their role in the present. How do we relate to elements of history today, how are they still relevant to us? The paintings are based on the sculptural figures that people encounter in gardens and on museum displays of heavily decorated objects. They also act as a reminder of the preferences in three dimensional representation from a certain age. For me, they are always in conversation with the surrounding nature and the people that pass by, taking pictures or posing. I wanted to approach these scenes from a different angle and juxtapose different cutouts in the same painting, which alludes to capturing and storing fleeting images in a dynamic conversation between past and present.

Water is a recurring motif in your work, symbolizing fluidity and transformation. What inspired you to use water as a central element in “Conversations”, and how do you see its metaphorical significance evolving in your future projects?

Water plays an important part in many of my paintings, as a means of reflection and also as an element filtered through a personal approach. I started exploring water and the compositions it creates in the “Reflections” and “Mirrors” series, developed further in “Conversations” where the human figure has a more tangible presence. Being painted in many of my themes, it changes its significance over time, from creating a mirror-like surface to becoming an element of dialogue with the human figure. Water is an element in continuous movement and its fluidity inspires each of us differently. Moving waves are ephemeral points, and through these compositions I wanted to preserve a fragment of time, in a unique moment as I found it. In future paintings I am more inclined to explore the highlights on the surface and to add a more unfocused quality to the image. How light plays on the surface of water can be a way of portraying shifts in mood or perspective. Water’s surface reflects but also distorts, which can serve as a metaphor for how we perceive reality versus the actual truth.

In your “Reflections” series, you depict urban spaces reflected in natural environments. How do you approach this interplay of the artificial and the organic, and what conversations do you hope these images inspire in viewers?

Personal works have a preference for realistic images, being inspired by nature, personal photographs, fragments of memory. The documentation process that takes place before starting a project aims to build a narrative thread, always considering the final result. In the „Reflections” series I focused on spaces with a double meaning, transformed through the water reflection. When moving waves were not to be found in a scene, their place was taken by reflective surfaces or glass panels and everyday places took on a new meaning.

In this project I set out to explore a personal interpretation of the past few years. The onset of the pandemic has brought a new dimension to this series of works, they can also be seen as a reflection of isolation, of landscapes and routes where few people appear, of reality seen indirectly. I also wanted to preserve the timeless character of the images that marked the slow passage of time, the urban space reflected in nature. Following this series, I developed the project "Mirrors" which consists of round compositions reminiscent of tondo, filtered in a personal manner. With works from this series I participated in the first edition of the Durres International Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Your installation “Mirrors” at the Durres International Biennale engaged with themes of AI and the hybrid future. How did the reflective and interpretive qualities of mirrors allow you to explore the intersection of humanity, technology, and nature in this work?

The installation “Mirrors” explores the way we view the avalanche of images and information from the media, offering an alternative to reflect on what we see around us, a slowing down of the pace. These works take their inspiration from travels, landscapes and sculptures, using text fragments that refer to social media or dynamic content. The paintings mirror the experience from a variety of places, concentrated in a fragment that introduces the viewer in the work. The detailed images and figurative elements are balanced by surfaces with text inserts that deal with our use of technology.

The theme of the first edition of the Durres Bienniale of Contemporary Art was “AI: The Hybrid Future”. Curator Oltsen Gripshi envisioned the paintings in a dynamic way within the installation, the Romanian pavilion being in dialogue with other works in the space. Their assembly within the exhibition took on a new meaning: from an organized form, they migrate towards entropy, where order or predictability disappears. As we continue to imagine a hybrid future, the boundaries between the real and the artificial are increasingly blurred.

I wanted to explore several types of images in this project: effigies, oversized details and elements from media culture. The painting “Video paused” was inspired by the YouTube message and I liked how it resonates with us. Are we so caught up in technology or do we manage to take a break? Are we still paying attention to our environment? The mirror works act as an interpretation of reality filtered through a personal perspective, where nature meets technology. I also explored the fluidity of water and the images it creates, transforming several canvases into elements composed only of water shapes. Waves are ephemeral points, and through these compositions I aimed to capture a fleeting moment in time.

Your fascination with architectural elements like baroque ceilings often informs your artistic practice. How does painting these historical interiors alter their original context, and what new narratives do you aim to evoke by reinterpreting them on canvas?

There is a rich layer of history in the trompe-l-oeil depictions found in baroque interiors or ceilings. Traveling is a source of inspiration for me and I always document locations and interiors where I can imagine a story. The baroque inspired ceilings bring a different point of view and I wanted to investigate their psychological impact, the viewer is always impressed by them but they must be seen from a distance. Painting them on canvas, it’s a new experience of bringing the ceilings closer to us, rather than seeing them above.

For these works that appear in different series I worked with images that have a certain stillness in them. One of the baroque inspired scenes also overlapped with a cube’s reflection, shielding objects from the viewer’s reach in a tantalizing manner. I wanted to investigate the need of protecting fragments of history, which are relevant to us in a different way now. I could say I am searching for a different layer beyond places and things we already know. I’m also interested in the aesthetic quality of the images and in discovering ways to make them meaningful.

Having been represented by 418 Gallery (Munich-Cetate) since 2011, how has this collaboration shaped your artistic journey, and in what ways has the gallery supported the evolution of your themes and projects?

Being one of the 418 Gallery’s artists has provided a frame for artistic expression and visibility over the years, while also shaping meaningful connections. We have collaborated for several exhibitions and projects and the gallery’s support encouraged me to explore different topics and themes.

The generous architectural space at the gallery’s headquarters in Cetate on the Danube is a source of inspiration for Romanian and international artists who participate in exhibitions, residencies and create site-specific works. The atmosphere at Cetate was also a source of inspiration for my solo show "Deconstructed Spaces" in 2019, a project that I enjoyed working on. It started from the idea of showing a version of the actual space, through the memory of some places that keep transforming. The deconstructed landscapes offered an alternative reality, placing together stripes of landscape that were stretching over multiple canvas panels. I worked with the square format of the canvas, that is a symbol of stability in time, which I further used in the elements that reconstruct a scene. How did it look like before, what could this place be in the future? The landscape was fragmented by a temporal distortion, overlapping the past and the present. My aim there was to to further deconstruct the reality and propose alternate versions of it within the same canvas.

Our collaboration has evolved over time and the gallery has been very supportive during the development of various projects and ideas. Recently, at the 2024 solo show “Konversationer” at Rumänska kulturinstitutet in Stockholm I had a very good communication with Antonella Grevers, the curator of the exhibition. It was very interesting for me to observe how the themes and the works were connected, the exhibition being at the same time a conversation between recent personal projects that reflect my artistic exploration.