MIKI ŠKORPIL

TRANSYLVANIAN PAINTING TODAY: THE EERIE WOODS(WO)MEN OF CLUJ

I take the 9:41 express from Prague, my hometown and the capital of the Czech Republic. Through Pardubice, Česká Třebová, and Zábřeh na Moravě, we reach Olomouc. If you so wish, you could also continue through Ostrava all the way to Warsaw. I, however, get off at the Olomouc main station, at 12 on the dot. From there, it is only a 5-minute walking distance to Telegraph Gallery. Housed in a former telegraph relay factory, they call themselves a relay between Olomouc and the rest of the contemporary (art) world. Especially in the context of their current exhibition Transylvanian Painting Today, curated by Jane Neal, who worked extensively with the gallery in the past, it aims to create a connection between the Czech public and both the established and upcoming artists comprising the so-called ‘Cluj School’.

The story Jane Neal creates is quite similar to the one she advanced in her curation of German Painting Now! at Telegraph in 2021. Namely, that the artists of Leipzig and Cluj act as a connecting element between East and West. They combine the techniques they were taught at traditionally-oriented art academies in the former Eastern Bloc with practices of conceptual art stemming from Western postmodernism. This allows them to transcend the limits of both approaches and herald the resurgence of figurative painting with a conceptual twist.[1] While this does beg the question of whether Eastern art is only deemed worthy and fully legitimate when combined with Western artistic paradigms and judged against their standards, it can ultimately be viewed as an empowering moment; the artists rework the specific conditions of their education outside the Western institutionalised artworld into a defining element of their practice. 

Several concepts provide an additional bind between the artists beyond their place of education—funnily enough, for all the emphasis the exhibition places on the artists’ figurative style of painting, I do not see many consistent stylistic similarities between them, as one would expect from a so-called ‘school’. While the exhibition may not be conceptually unified in a strict sense—though one could argue this is not its aim in the first place—it nevertheless brings into view a set of shared themes. Some artists reflect on the space that loosely binds them together: the woods and villages of ‘Transylvania’, which have been since forever, but most remarkably since the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897, associated with the mystical, the supernatural, maybe even the eerie (or the Other?). The artists seem aware of the implications this association carries. They often approach the subject with light irony, such as David Farcaș in Woodsman, which blends the mythical figure of the grim reaper with that of a lumberjack in the Transylvanian forests, or in a more contemplative register, as in Șerban Savu’s Rubble, which reflects on the juxtaposition of (maybe Soviet?) construction debris and the remnants of an antique statue.  

The human body is also a recurring theme in the work of the ‘Cluj School’, albeit in diverse contexts and linked to different secondary motifs. Bodily changes and mutilations appear in the works of Nicolae Romanițan as a combination of (Byzantine) Christianity and 90s dungeon video games, in Paul Robas as well as Ioana Iacob as meditations on sexuality, and in Hortensia Mi Kafchin as a reflection of gender transition and technological bodily modifications. These are but the most explicit portrayals of the human body in this exhibition. The truth is that human bodies in some way, shape or form appear in almost all the works—one could argue that even Adrian Ghenie’s Stalin’s Tomb features a human body, albeit in a severely decomposed and conceited form. While this may be expected in figurative painting in general, what becomes apparent is a sustained and conscious exploration of human physicality and embodied experience.

Lastly, another motif appears across the exhibition that may function less as a theme and more as a mood or atmosphere; yet despite that (or maybe because of that), it seems to operate as the key binding element among the artists. That concept is eeriness, the sense of something being off, or maybe even touched by a form of magical realism. This is obvious in the openly dreamlike paintings of artists such as Mirela Moscu, Robert Fekete, or Radu Băieș, who transport viewers into self-contained worlds, often chaotic or hauntingly beautiful. We encounter seemingly wild-west-inspired landscapes (Fekete), plunge into mythology (Băieș), and indulge in wild folkloric celebrations that stand on the border between figuration and abstraction (Moscu). But even in the seemingly ordinary, our-worldly compositions of Marius Bercea or Șerban Savu, there is a lingering sense that something is not right or slightly askew, that the characters know more than we do, or that some unspoken tragedy is amiss in the bleak landscapes they portray. Maybe this affect can be read as a form of escapism from the gloomy everyday reality of an increasingly unsupportable and unsupportive capitalist present, or a reflection on the magic-laden region of ‘Transylvania’. Whatever its sources, I would not hesitate to call this pervasive eeriness one of the defining elements of the ‘Cluj School’.

It takes me just under an hour to go through the exhibition, including taking pictures. It is not overly large, but it suffices as an introduction to the group. Many questions remain unanswered: about the ‘magical nature of Transylvania’ and its eerie manifestations, the artists’ supposed combination of technique and conceptual thinking, and the degree to which the ‘Cluj School’ actually constitutes a coherent artistic group. But I would find it much more alarming if I left an exhibition with no open questions, since this is, in a sense, what exhibitions are for. In this case, it achieves its stated goal of relaying important contemporary Romanian artists to the Czech public, who (let us assume) may not have been familiar with their work. And I guess that is what an exhibition should do, at least as a first encounter. So, at the end of my day, I return to Prague with the 17:55 express, with the sense of having encountered a fluid scene—a living school with voices resonating across generations, overlapping with practices that digress and evolve.

[1] Neal, Jane. Transylvanian Painting Today. Telegraph Gallery Olomouc, 2026.