TRANSCEND. Painting, installation, and performance
The Cluj-Napoca Art Museum (MACN), a public institution of county interest operating under the authority of the Cluj County Council, invites you to visit the exhibition "TRANSCEND" by artist Florin Olari, curated by Ancuța-Lăcrimioara Chiș, between September 16 and October 4, 2026. The opening event will take place on September 16, 2026, starting at 18:00. Opening remarks will be delivered by: Hermina Csata, President of the UAP (Fine Artists' Union), Cluj-Napoca Branch; Radu Rațiu, Vice President of the Cluj County Council; and Marius Țion, writer. The exhibition opening will be complemented by a performance act sustained by Vlad Sebastian and Alexandra Nuna, conceived in dialogue with the visual universe and expressive register of the works.
TRANSCEND finds its key to interpretation in the English verb "to transcend," which depicts transition, change, and a crossing beyond the prosaic interpretation of the image and the immediate perception of suffering or trials, toward that state of beatitude and purification. All elements of the exhibition participate in this evanescence, starting from dark, heavily textured, and fragmented areas toward compositions in diaphanous colors and luminous, even incandescent surfaces. The visual discourse of Byzantine origin detaches the symbols from their exclusively iconographic function and superimposes them onto a contemporary plastic language. They preserve and amplify the memory of the sacred, while also settling on a territory that investigates the human condition of suffering and the possibility of overcoming it. The honeycomb transposed into labyrinths of wax and light becomes the conceptual axis that suggests order and wholeness, the primordial matter as a sign of the transcendent, but also of suprasensible reality, within an installation that surpasses the objecthood of form and creates an immersive, metaphysical space.
Within the exhibition TRANSCEND (painting, installation, and performance), Florin Olari builds a synesthetic artistic universe in which all senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing) participate in the experience of becoming, without this representing an acquired state or a final destination. Everything is openness and envelopment, encapsulated in the manifestation of the conversion of experience.
Florin Olari encompasses a complex professional background, having studies in theology, a master's degree, and a doctorate in fine and decorative arts, while also being a full member of the Fine Artists' Union of Romania, Cluj-Napoca Branch, a painter and a restorer authorized by the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate. A polyvalent artist, Olari has consolidated his presence in the Romanian artistic landscape; his activity in the field of ecclesiastical monumental painting stands out through the rigor of iconographic construction, the scale of projects, and the deepening of the plastic language of Byzantine expression. Moreover, his artistic research consistently extends into the territory of contemporary art, through painting and installation, in registers that interpret Byzantine elements—the symbol of the honeycomb—within an intense relationship between matter and contemplation. This dual affiliation—on the one hand, the rigor and memory of sacred art, and on the other hand, the freedom of exploration of contemporary art—thus outlines the essential coordinates of his artistic journey and, at the same time, the conceptual foundation of the exhibition TRANSCEND.
