The PICTODROME exhibition by Dumitru Gorzo highlights several defining aspects of his art. On one hand, from the perspective of the image-maker, action and the creative process are essential to the meaning of his work; on the other, from the viewer’s standpoint, one is challenged to replace contemplative reception of the surface with a participatory and immersive engagement.
In Gorzo’s practice—whether drawing or painting—action holds as much weight as the finished work itself. He has accustomed us to a kind of double game, in which the viewer is subjected to an exercise in diversion, shifting their attention from the artwork to the act of creation, and vice versa. One could say that what must be followed in his approach includes both the result—the new forms—and the path taken to achieve them. Within this framework, the artwork loses some of its autonomy, and the medium loses its purity, stepping away from modernist theory and granting painting and drawing a critical and performative dimension.
Nonetheless, Dumitru Gorzo does not engage in performance in the strict sense of the term, as a category of contemporary art, nor does he employ a postmodern formula of critical action where art becomes a tool for discourse. Rather, the “subject” of his work is an extension of the ongoing adjustment and construction of his own subjectivity. The dynamic, active, and interventionist nature of his artistic endeavor reflects an unconventional and distinctive mode of engaging painting within a contemporary context.
