Radu Șerban. Interval
Radu Șerban. Interval
June 25 – July 20, 2025
Opening: June 25, 2025, 6 PM
Guests:
Horea Avram, art critic
Kancsura István, painter
Florin Gherasim, museographer
Radu Șerban is a visual artist active both in Romania and internationally, with a career distinguished by coherence, reflection, and a continuous exploration of visual language. He is a professor at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, where he has been teaching since 1990. In 2006, he earned a PhD in Visual Arts.
He completed his studies at the “Nicolae Grigorescu” Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest, specializing in Painting, and later received research grants and artist residencies in Italy, Spain, and Canada. Between 1997 and 2002, he lived in Toronto, where he held an individual residency and was a member of Visual Arts Ontario.
He is the founder of the ”Art in the Garden” International Visual Arts Symposium, held annually at the Botanical Garden in Jibou, which has gathered over 100 artists from eight different countries. In parallel, he has developed and curated numerous projects and publications dedicated to contemporary art.
Radu Șerban has presented more than 30 solo exhibitions, including: Interval (Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, 2025); Continuum (Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, 2020); Waters and Caresses (Brâncoveanu Palaces Cultural Center, Mogoșoaia, 2018); Glissando (Arcade 24 Gallery, Bistrița, 2016); TransAparences (Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, 2010); Traces (Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, 2006); Objects from Within (Teodora Art Gallery, Toronto, 2002); DeSigns (Pantheon Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, 1996).
He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Romania and abroad, including: Reconfigurations 2024 (Art Museum of Iași, 2025); Puls 21 (MNAC, Bucharest, 2023); De Facto (BWA SOKÓŁ Gallery, Nowy Sącz, Poland, 2023); Embracing Dialogues (DCS Contemporary Gallery, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2021); Paradise Lost (Brukenthal Contemporary Art Museum, Sibiu, 2019);
Centenary Salon of Contemporary Arts (MNAR, Bucharest, 2018); Objects from Within (Teodora Art Gallery, Toronto, 2002); Toronto International Art Fair (2002); Romanian Painting (De Boog Gallery, The Netherlands, 1997).
Over the course of his career, he has participated in more than 30 creative camps and art symposiums. He has received numerous distinctions, including the National Salon Painting Award (2016), the Excellence Trophy awarded by the Ministry of Culture for his curatorial work (2014), and the Youth Award of the Romanian Union of Visual Artists (1993).
His works are included in public and private collections such as: MNAC (Bucharest), Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, Art Museum of Iași, Comparative Art Museum of Sângeorz-Băi, Banca Transilvania (Cluj-Napoca), the Sălaj County Center for Culture and Arts;
Works in Private Collections in: Canada, Italy, United Kingdom, USA, Switzerland, and the Netherlands
Interval is not only the title of this exhibition, but also a metaphor for an inner state – a space of reflection, a temporary suspension between what has been and what is yet to come. It is also a moment of looking back, with a blend of nostalgia, lucidity, and gratitude. In an artist’s life, there are silent thresholds, sometimes marked by age, other times by the mere awareness of an accumulation – of time, of work, of traces left behind. For me, these traces are the works themselves: visible fragments of a human passage, of a journey constantly seeking balance between interior and exterior, between form and meaning.
Horea Avram, excerpt from the text On the Interval, from the exhibition catalog
Interval is not only the title of this exhibition, but also a metaphor for an inner state – a space of reflection, a temporary suspension between what has been and what is yet to come. It is also a moment of looking back, with a blend of nostalgia, lucidity, and gratitude. In an artist’s life, there are silent thresholds, sometimes marked by age, other times by the mere awareness of an accumulation – of time, of work, of traces left behind. For me, these traces are the works themselves: visible fragments of a human passage, of a journey constantly seeking balance between interior and exterior, between form and meaning.
Radu Șerban, excerpt from the text 2025: Postscript of a Stage, from the exhibition catalog
