POLITICAL BESTIARY 2 - GALATECA GALLERY - 2014

The art of drawing is the medium that offers Valeriu Mladin unlimited possibilities to create, in a distinct and personal way, a visual and thematic universe whose language has the power to endure beyond historical epochs and geographical boundaries.

In the series of ten monumental drawings exhibited under the title Political Bestiary at Galateca Gallery, the artistic discourse—endowed thematically with liminal values—is above all a demonstration of mastery, which places the author without difficulty among the great classics of the art of drawing. Valeriu Mladin reveals, in both artistic and technical registers, the complex values of line and hatching in the full magnitude of their expressive trajectories.

The artist’s magical sense for form, ascending rhythms, and extreme contrasts is spectacularly composed between the delicately simulated zones created by the alternation of white, black, and gray. The satirical expressions of the subjects are the result of crystallized formulations that are clear yet surprising in their balance between shadow and light.

The certainty and proportion with which the author commands the surface and space of the paper, the capacity to construct value tensions, and the perfection with which he constantly balances compositional unity through the fullest use of the many technical means specific to the art of drawing, all make the impact of the proposed theme—with its veracity, subtle irony, and the charm of its physiognomies—rise to the perennial sphere of universality.

Ana-Maria Altmann