Romania's 10 Contemporary Artists and Where to Find Them — theculturetrip.com

Serban Savu’s magnetic portraits of rural and urban Romanian life convey a stage-managed snapshot of the country’s status quo, allowing the viewer a sort of cultural voyeurism that’s focussed on the nation’s untapped hinterland and nondescript metropolitan spaces. It’s particularly important that Savu chooses to obscure any personal elements of his paintings by removing discernible facial features from his subjects, as if the people here are entirely blind to the artistic lens that’s focussed upon them. Just as the workman in ‘The Balcony’ (2006), and the bathers from ‘Weekend 2’ (2007) are unaware of our gaze, so too are they unaware of the machinations of the great political morass that’s currently changing their beloved homeland—a homeland that’s depicted here with verdant bucolic beauty and civic cleanliness.

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