YOU! – Aurel Vlad’s Exhibition in Constanța Art Museum
YOU! – Aurel Vlad’s Exhibition in Constanța Art Museum

Summary/Abstract: Who are we humans, we who always need to descend into the inferno to recognize the true face of love? My personal time capsule that I keep ready for when the Voyager spacecraft is launched, contains a painting by Mark Rothko, a copy of one of Lars von Trier’s films, and a sculpture by Aurel Vlad, because the message to outer worlds should speak about us, humans at a more profound level, absolved of artifice, or aesthetic dogmas. In Ancient Egypt, the sculptor was called "He who gives life" because it was believed that he granted immortality through his works; for the ancient Egyptians, the afterlife was even more important than the life they lived, and sensed. Aurel Vlad is not only a figurative sculptor. He is a sculptor of human condition in all of its poses. He loves the HUMAN BEING; probably, if asked "What is hell?" he would answer like one of Dostoevsky's characters in "The Brothers Karamazov”: "... it is the suffering of being unable to love.". There is no compromise in the universe of forms that Aurel Vlad created, just a raw, direct representation of our anxieties, pain, fears, but also of love, hope and of the excruciating journey to find our true identity. His works always look intently to the sky, in a quiet imploration of divinity, unsure if their prayer would be heard, or answered to. Theirs is a silent cry, a cringe of pain discreetly hidden under layers of metal, under clothes that metamorphose into shadows that show a striking resemblance to graves. Sculpture is the artist's way of connecting to the deepest and the most painful of the human condition – suffering and loss – which he then transforms, and brings back to life in tangible, perennial form.

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