”The Path” Opens at RCI New York

Updated: Mar 22

Duo Exhibition by Diana Nicolaie and Carmen Marin

It's a busy season for visual arts at the Romanian Cultural Institute, as a string of back-to-back projects keeps the Brâncuși Gallery in special focus! Our next exhibition, entitled THE PATH: FUSION OF TWO WORLDS, INSIDE/OUTSIDE, opens on October 26 with an ingenious showcase of art, design, and lighting, featuring the formidable duo Diana Nicolaie and Carmen Marin in an artistic vis-à-vis curated by Ioana Ciocan, Romania's most influential curator.

While different in aesthetic allegiance and technique, the (literally) luminous paintings, installations, and objects presented fuse their radiant energy in a sort of exultation of light, understood both as an ascensional symbol or guiding principle, indicating "the path" to ourselves, and as creative substance, the very material of the works themselves. Project made in collaboration with ART SAFARI Bucharest.

The Path. Fusion of Two Worlds Inside/Outside

Featuring: Diana Nicolaie & Carmen Marin

Curator: Ioana Ciocan

October 26 - November 10, 2023

Exhibition Opening: Thursday, October 26, 2023 | 7-9 PM

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday 9 AM - 5 PM

Meet the artists

CARMEN MARIN presents a collection of six paintings that adopt a surrealist approach, delving into the realms of dreams, the unconscious, and the ever-evolving sociocultural phenomena. Central themes of existentialism and postmodernism have pervaded her semi-figurative paintings since 2020. Drawing inspiration from the visual vocabulary of modernist and contemporary masters like Joan Mitchell, Georg Baselitz, or Kiki Smith, Carmen Marin approaches each canvas with an original perspective, exploring both the visual and human condition in an ongoing journey of reinvention. Carmen Marin was involved in preparing the "Pain Memorial" exhibition in Sighet and she got her first international recognition in 2004 when she won the Art Prize at a salon organized in Lausanne, Switzerland. Throughout her career, she collaborated with several European art galleries in Greece, Spain, Germany, Finland, Norway, Ukraine, Italy and the USA.

“As Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, ‘Each man must invent his own way.’ Every exhibition is unique and has its poetic nature. It is up to the viewers to create their poems and leave a message behind them. We are all on a mission! I believe that the canvas surface has the potential to manifest the interconnected aspects of our perception of the world, transcending the linguistic multivocality of figuration and abstraction, organic and inorganic, self and other. Although polysemy is an essential starting point for understanding and rationalizing our realities, it is necessary to transcend the limitations of this logic. Painting is a means of achieving this goal," states Carmen Marin.

DIANA NICOLAIE has recently designed an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, "Bags: Inside Out", currently on view at Art Safari Bucharest. Diana creates distinctive, monumental pieces and proper installations on canvas. Her art is based on the combination of varied shapes and textures, strong volumes, and mixed techniques. Her playful use of lights and shadows is an open invitation to the viewer to enter her original artistic universe.

"In my perspective, light is the unifying force that harmonizes perspectives, emotions and disparate worlds, guiding the viewer toward introspection. Light converges various viewpoints on what we feel and experience, transforming a moment, an emotion, or an image into a unique and defining encounter. In my works, I aim to capture the artful fusion of sculpture and painting in conveying a message through light. While we interpret images, textures and ideas differently, light remains a constant presence. It is the element that breathes life and emotion into an image defined by shadows and colors," explains Diana Nicolaie.

Meet the curator

IOANA CIOCAN is the Commissioner of Romania at the Venice Biennale and a member of the scientific council of the Cotroceni National Museum. In 2023, she was honored with the Eisenhower Fellowship, and in 2021, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania awarded her the “Cultural Merit” Medal for “Fine Arts.”