Announcing the representation of Roberta Curcă
Gaep is delighted to announce the representation of Roberta Curcă.
In her drawings, objects, and artist books, Roberta Curcă pins down the ephemeral through a process that seeks to reconcile the chaotic nature of lived reality with the methodical acts of collecting, reviewing, selecting, and organizing material. She frequently adopts pre-existing systems for structuring and displaying information – such as stencils, swatches, palettes, and grids – in order to process thoughts, experiences, and emotions. As the artist notes, her current practice engages with “layouts and templates from scientific illustrations, archives, apps or industrial contexts and architectural elements.” While she formally appropriates these frameworks, she infuses them with her own visual language. Their original impersonal aspect is neutralized through imagery and texts that are deeply personal.
Rooted in a daily studio practice, her meticulous drawings are informed by fieldwork documentation, readings, diaristic writing, visual journaling, and calligraphic exercises. The body of work formed by yearly Samplers, seasonal Notes, monthly Calendars, and Daily Drawings amounts to a personal inquiry into how time can be pictured and how individual experience may be articulated within its passage. Other series address materiality and the potential circularity of artistic production: fragments of drawings are assembled onto paper made from the remaining fragments (Paper series), while residues of prior projects are collated into new works (Junk Journal series).
Her most recent series, Notes Extended, draws inspiration from vernacular Romanian modernist architecture, which often integrated remnants of industrial production into everyday structures such as window frames, fences, and gates. In addition to conducting field research on these architectural details, Roberta Curcă collects and incorporates reclaimed metal and vinyl plates from the heavy and printing industries. Parallel research in contemporary art and design theory, particularly regarding notions of negative space, material memory, and ecological ethics, enables her to develop the series as the pursuit of a new visual and material language of circularity.
Gaep presented works by Roberta Curcă in Back to Where It All Began (group exhibition, 2023, part of the project ACCELERATOR. Mentoring and Production for Emerging Artists), Gaep Presents (duo exhibition with Vlad Albu, 2025) and Memories and Prophecies (group exhibition, 2025, where she participated as an invited artist). A selection of new works will be featured in the gallery’s booth at RAD Art Fair (23-26 April 2026).
“Roberta Curcă is one of the most compelling artists we encountered through ACCELERATOR – our mentoring program for emerging artists,” says Andrei Breahnă, co-founder of Gaep. “Over the past four four years, we have followed the evolution of her practice and have been impressed by her determination to create a personal system for reflecting on lived experience.”
“I build on objects that are carefully and slowly researched, that over time, through care, consideration, yet inevitable personalization, become steeped in biographical significance.” — Roberta Curcă
Roberta Curcă (b. 1991, lives and works in Bucharest) holds both a BA and an MA in Drawing from the National University of Arts in Bucharest and has conducted research in cultural studies at CESI – Center of Excellence in Image Studies. Her work has been exhibited at Gaep, Sector 1, Museum of Recent Art, Ivan Gallery, Mobius, and Atelier 35 in Bucharest; Zina Gallery and MATCA art space in Cluj-Napoca; Accademia di Romania in Rome; Kunsthalle Bega and the 2022 Beta Architecture Biennial in Timișoara. She was among the ten artists selected for ACCELERATOR. Mentoring and Production for Emerging Artists (2022–2023).
