Gaep Presents: Adrian Cojocaru | Acts of In-Between

A story of food and art — and of the rituals and environments for their creation —, Adrian Cojocaru’s first exhibition at Gaep features six large-scale works that blend charcoal drawing on canvas with richly textural painting. Informed by the distinctly modern experience of fine dining, this new body of work arises from two main gestures. One is the analogy that the artist draws between the precise choreography of a professional kitchen, in which every second counts, and his own movements, similarly exact, in the studio. The other is an act of double reveal. Cojocaru takes us behind the scenes, both in a restaurant and in his studio, to look at what diners and viewers don’t usually see: the cluttered office next to the kitchen; the communal solitude of chefs who cleave tightly to their duties; the drawings that, at most times, precede painting in a painter’s practice.

Adrian Cojocaru’s work begins outside the studio itself. Convinced that walking is a form of knowledge, he strolls through cities in a state that most dedicated urban walkers know: “an observer’s state, cool, withdrawn, with senses sharpened, a good state for anybody who needs to reflect or create.”[Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust. A History of Walking, Granta Books, 2022]. Spontaneously, he photographs some of the places which he stumbles upon, particularly cafés, bakeries, ice cream shops, and restaurants. Such records of unpredictable encounters add to the planned photographs he takes inside professional kitchens (including the high-end kitchen in the US where he had a summer job as a student) and to the direct experience of dining at various restaurants that he researches beforehand. Compositions start to be derived by drawing from the images and observations thus collected. This M.O. allows him to clarify the emotionally resonant moments and to engage with the legacy of figurative painting, skillfully connecting historic references with contemporary representations.

Across the works on view in the exhibition is a preoccupation with ritualized patterns of behaviour — of those who make the food and of those who eat it. Instead of the popular focus on chefs turned superstars, Cojocaru is fascinated by the orchestrated sequence of actions and processes, by the work ethic that makes a dining experience memorable. The presentation in the gallery echoes the script of such an experience — from anticipating it (Agency of a liminal space) and starting to appreciate the expertise of its makers (The Italians were marvellous), to having a different disposition at the end of the meal (Going anywhere, we were vulnerable). With each work, Cojocaru highlights competing surface qualities as he overlays the drawn canvas with painted details; there is equal power, he suggests, in both forms of mark making. Acts of In-Between shows a young artist reflecting on the nature of his work while attuning us to the realities of another professional environment and inviting us to think about the value of respect and care — for ourselves and for the others.

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“Gaep Presents” is a new programme of exhibitions that focuses on work by emerging artists and by established collaborators of the gallery other than the artists it represents. The programme builds upon the four iterations of ACCELERATOR, the mentoring projects for emerging artists in which Gaep has been a partner since 2022, and on diverse collaborations with artists in the gallery’s 10-year history. Adrian Cojocaru: Acts of In-Between is the first exhibition in this series.

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Adrian Cojocaru (b. 1993) works to celebrate the richness of contemporary human experience through the medium of painting. By integrating walking into his artistic practice and photographing his immediate surroundings, he has accumulated a large number of images that serve as source material alongside pop culture and art history. A sense of displacement and longing caused by his dual upbringing in Eastern and Western Europe is a silent undercurrent running through his paintings, which often feature activities, jobs, and experiences that tend to be overlooked. Cojocaru has been an Erasmus+ student at PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, Belgium, and has just completed an MA in Painting at the National University of Arts ‘George Enescu’ in Iași. In 2023, he was one of the ten participating artists in ACCELERATOR Brașov, a mentoring project organized by Asociația Culturală Eastwards Prospectus in partnership with Gaep and The Art Museum of Brașov.