Gili Mocanu: As If

We are pleased to announce Gili Mocanu's new solo exhibition at Arsmonitor, titled As If. This marks the artist's third exhibition in collaboration with our gallery, following Don't Cry Anymore, Gili (2024), held at our Bucharest space, and Hill with Skull (2025), curated by Mihnea Mircan and organized by Arsmonitor in Timișoara at the ISHO Pavilion.

In the "mirrors" presented in the exhibition As If (as Gili Mocanu refers to them), beyond a visible reconciliation of opposites established between the masculine and the feminine, symbolized through the Oval, the Rhombus, the Triangle, and the Square, another invisible reconciliation is brought into play: that between the image and the viewer. At this point, the situation bifurcates. The first viewer who looks into the mirror is the artist himself. The background, furrowed by cracks and sinusoidal cuts and formed through effects of light and shadow, introduces the issue of refraction, sending us into an aquatic dimension. The other figure invited to look into the mirror, the public viewer, more precisely through the figures in the foreground, does so within a reflective dimension. In opposition to the idea inherited from Leon Battista Alberti, in which painting is conceived as a window, we are placed in a situation where painting becomes a mirror, as if the viewer were one of the principal figures completing the pictorial composition.

Curated by Silviu Pădurariu