by Alina Livneva

6 June ''18

recent acquisitions

Virtosu Art Gallery acquires eight oil paintings for its Private Collection, Geneva

Virtosu Art Gallery has recently acquired eight works of British artist Gheorghe Virtosu for its Private Collection, Geneva.

Employing a unique and original style Virtosu brings intelligence in connecting abstract art to reality, incorporating the effects of describing reality through the creative code that is based on visual ‘struggles’ in which a viewer has to wander through the labyrinth of chaotic drawing and elaborated texture. Despite detaching the image from depicting the real-life objects, the artist conveys the message through his work. 

The works titles are Blairism, Gaddafi Sentence, European Optimism, Revolutionary Ideology, 2000 Camp David Summit, Woman Politician, Socialist Fraternal Kiss, Crown Holder. The works were curated in order to enrich our Political History Private Collection.

Gaddafi Sentence

The swells and recessions of Virtosu's undulant forms transform a beaten face into a beautified and enigmatic form as if to create an analogous but strained relation between the untidy, the macabre and the stuff of life on one hand. and the aestheticization of life in art whose schematizations both contrasts with life's defiance of summation and are in uneasy concert with worldly existence in the sense that sensibility can transliterate the violent into the rarefied genre of the tragic. Full article...

European Optimism

the artist reflects on people tending to adopt optimistic positions when they are in the greatest need of help, usually in the transitional periods of their personal or social lives. Optimism exists as an emotional prediction, as a sunny perception of reality, which might be based on intuition or on ignorance (or both), but is also nurtured in childhood through the wisdom of generations. ’A boy wearing a cap’ visualize the character the artist equates to the title. Full article...  

Revolutionary Ideology

Visualisation of a complex subject. Virtosu needs no slogans, no obvious manifestations, and no for visually recognizable characters for that. He chooses active, free-flowing forms interlacing with each other, shaping up the pulsating irregular ‘conglomerate.’ That conglomerate is about to fall apart, yet it is kept together by the resistance of the ‘outer’ space - the aggressively liberate, expressively rendered background. Full article...

2000 Camp David Summit

Gheorghe Virtosu vision of art’s role is the representation of the transcendental side of life, not just an eye-pleaser. His work is seen as an important platform for speaking up social position and discussing political matters. The whole visual construction of the piece looks like being torn from inside and is about to burst - the exact feeling of the situation on the Near East. The summit failed, the struggle continues. Full article...

Woman Politician

The title triggers associations and engages the viewers in the dialogue. The artist doesn’t want to lose the control over the painting’s interpretation, as he points out with the gender vector of its content. And instead of suggesting our own versions, we, like detectives, have to track the development of the author’s thought and reconstruct the archetypal image of the Woman of Power from the puzzle of lines, curves and colors. Full article...

Socialist Fraternal Kiss

The artist painting style in this work is close to the game we’ve all played at least once when you look at clouds in the sky and suddenly see the character encrypted’ in it. The same way here, we’re given a tiny detail to interpret the rest of the piece. Nonetheless, the work itself retains its autonomy and independence from our interpretations: one can perceive it as the emotionally charged painting field, another sees it as the depiction of the fraternal kiss that becomes the kiss of Judas.Full article...

Crown Holder

The artist view is distant from thinking of the people, who follow the path of ascendancy, as of the ‘lucky ones.’ He knows the shine of gold is just a cover that hides numerous obstacles, doubts and dangers of such position. An invitation to a game of chess even for the best players. Full article...

These works were curated to participate in our first exhibition #1 Solo show “Political history” that will open at Virtosu Art Gallery on the 15^th of July 2018.

“Political history” - Abstract on organization and operation of power, their impact on society and popular response. Political entities and its expansion from basic systems of self-governance and monarchy to the complex democratic and totalitarian systems that exist today. -