Typically working in series and continuously calibrating his discourse around the notions of space, harmony, and tension, Pîslaru creates enigmatic compositions that hover between fiction and reality. While he refrains from fully disclosing his references – because intuition and memory also play a key role in his process –, the forms may originate in various vintage or contemporary magazines, books, technical diagrams, and user manuals. In the case of Clouding, the new series he made specifically for the presentation at EXPO CHICAGO, an additional reference may be images of abandoned buildings that nature has reclaimed. 

The artist states: “While the subject of architecture has always been present in my work, this is the first time that it becomes overt. I’m interested in the ways rigid geometry and absolute order, which architecture employs, represent a distancing of the man-made from the natural.”

Pîslaru’s paintings are descendants of influences scattered through time, including the surrealist work of Magritte, Duchamp’s drawings, and a Pop exaltation of color. He sometimes plays with incongruous elements, such as an object and its illogical shadow, to suggest unconscious processes of the mind, or builds a pictorial puzzle to evoke feelings of emptiness and a dystopian future.