Bogdan Pelmuș Romanian, b. 1975

Bogdan Pelmuș (b. 1974, Tulcea) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania, he graduated from the Faculty of the Arts in painting at the Nicolae Grigorescu University of the Arts, now the National University of the Arts, Bucharest, in 2000. Pelmuș was awarded the Artist's Union grant in 2001, and the 2008 Romanian Cultural Institute Constantin Brâncuși grant, Cité International des Arts, Paris, France. He is a founding member of the artistic groups Sursa Group, Hybrid Manifestation, NIT Gallery, and Loading Open LAB.

Besides drawing and painting, Bogdan Pelmuș has made experimental use of a wide range of artistic formulas, such as installation, performance, and video, as one of the most visible artists between 1990 and 2000 that filled the void in Romania's artistic landscape following the 1989 revolution. In Pelmuș's multidisciplinary and experimental practice the conventional boarders between artistic media and techniques fall away, a series of themes emerges that form an eclectic discourse about identity, globalism, pop culture, and consumerism.

The definition of a polarized consistency - between ironizing black humor and blank-verse poetry, between a destructive critical approach and expressionist compulsion - and of a general attitude against estheticism, Pelmuș's work arrives at a visual language that approaches serious play with the general idea of experimentation.

Writing replaces representation, the drawing line is transformed in signs and symbols, the painting canvas is replaced with tiles of a leaky roof, oil and acrylic are replaced by foam and other industrial materials, the smooth surface of the painting is replaced in 3D, and ready-made and objet trouvé complete the representative forms.