Cosmythology: The Work of Radu Oreian

The artwork of Radu Oreian dissolves distinctions in order to forge larger connections. Viewing his oeuvre in this light, Oreian’s works are forging a world history. In this historical formation the sacred and the secular, the spirit and the flesh, are intertwined, marbling in and out of each other. Coming from a literary background, I first associated his work with two 19th century American writers: Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. In Melville’s Moby Dick we see that it is better to live in the world of multiple truths than become obsessed with the absolute. In a similar spirit, Whitman says, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” The works of Radu Oreian are large and contain such multitudes. 

Oreian’s work does not bring together the body and spirit or the flesh and the sacred, as opposites for them to desconstruct; rather, we are reminded that we are not divided, that, in fact, we are in the process of a new kind of coming-together and we desperately need art to help us come to grips with this new being-in-the-world. In this way the works speak both directly to the body – through depictions of our organs – and the spirit – the need for the world to organize, so we feel at home in it. In order to organize the contemporary world, the artist uses a variety of techniques and mediums, blending repetitive, algorithmic motifs with the colors of corporeality.

The works create worlds that appear at once infinitely large and microscopically small. In his series of paintings titled Farewell to the Thinker of Thoughts, Oreian uses an electronic microscope connected to a smartphone app to create a world inside each mark. Colors of paint are layered and repeated in a sequence of thousands of tiny and repetitive marks, each point containing its own world, while also being essential to the piece as a whole. The work, inspired by text from the Upanishads, symbolically brings all of humanity together, each of us containing an infinity within, while also forming a totality. However, one infinity can be neither smaller nor larger than the other. This apparent contradiction is unpacked in the Upanishad’s verses, “How can the multiplicity of life delude the one who sees the unity?”, which of course reminds us of the earlier verse of Whitman’s. In Radu Oreian’s work connections across time and culture are given space to form through the gaze of the viewer, where an ancient Indian text can speak to a 19th century American poet, all through the textured canvass of a 21st century Romanian painter. 

 In the “Vector” series one is reminded that the term vector, coming from the latin vehere (to convey), is a wonderfully ambiguous word that refers to things as diverse as airplanes, organisms, and data sets. This ability to convey the complex web of connections we are caught up with in the contemporary world elevates these works from mere abstraction to something that is not abstract at all. In the work Vectorial Annunciation, Oreian conveys a religious and artistic history, while speaking directly to the present, networked world. The bottom section of the work references multiple renderings of the angel and Mary from artists such as DaVinci and Van Eyck, while the form reminds one of Rothko’s portal-like squares. In the top of the work, resin-thickened paint is layered in strands of various colors, covering the corporeal hues of the body, suggesting that the spirit and the body are always connected. Both the top and the bottom express multiplicity – one ancient, one modern, and neither expendable to understanding our current condition. These works ask, how do we dwell meaningfully in this cosmopolitan world where so much is being conveyed all at once?

The solution, the works imply, is to embrace what I wish to call a cosmopolitan mythology. Cosmopolitan because we must dwell in this connected manner -we have recently seen the dangers throughout the world when we do not see our history as ultimately forged together and tribalism takes hold – and mythological, in the sense that we must learn to dwell poetically with our past and resist the logic of domination that has become so powerful in the contemporary world. This is exemplified in works such as Zodiac of Collected Torments, and Cyclical Miniature where we come to grips with being a planetary people, coming to terms with both our corporeality and spirituality in order to live meaningfully amidst the growing noise. As the works show, both created during our current pandemic, the earth connects us all as organisms, - a theme expressed as well through another drawing, inspired by Darwin’s book of the same name, Study for Insectivorous Plants. Whether Dante or Darwin, Radu Oreian chooses texts that disclose worlds, texts that change the way we see as a starting point and while working through these texts he creates worlds that we are only beginning to unravel. 

While these works can be incredibly “readerly,” forging connections through a world of historic, mythologic, and philosophical images, they are also physical objects made from material. The thickness of the paint, the color within color, the flowing lines forming new paths, all create a mesmerizing effect familiar to anyone who has stood in front of Radu Oreian’s art. The physicality of the painting speaks to my own body, calling me closer as I examine them, feeling the insatiable desire to bring my flesh to the flesh of the paint. If I stare long enough, tracing the lines and connections, examining the figures and textures, something magical happens – the “I” seems to vanish and through the multiplicity that is me and the multiplicity that is the work, we form a unity. 

Through experiencing the work of Radu Oreian, one is reminded that art is not, at the end of the day, about the artist or even the spectator; art is about the relationship – the space between the two - and in this space, art reveals what is most essential: the truth about what it means to be human: We are large. We contain multitudes.

David Watson