One of the young visual artists who is more appreciated abroad than in Romania, judging after her buyers
by Laura Camelia
I met her first through the eyes of other people. I had heard about this little girl who would reach very far. When I met her in person, I knew why – she is glowing. After the last year’s varnishing at Metropolis Casino, I understood why she prefers the private events and what it means to have various and great people around you. She is a real vision and it is no wonder that two big brands have already associated their image with this ‚little girl’.
You are only 22 and your curriculum vitae is longer than others’ in a whole life. Among other things, I found out that you are a Philosophy olympic and you belong in the list of the overgifted young people in Romania. In spite of all this, you do not speak about you very often. Is this humbleness or insincerity?
To be true, I consider that I have already answered the questions that I have been asked the same way they have been directed to me. I have always talked about I have been requested to, so I think that neither humbleness nor insincerity is herein involved. Should you still insist, I have to tell you that I see the world as a big casino, where luck intertwins with strategy. Do not enjoy victory until the bets have been made! Humbleness, to the extent that your results are nothing compared to the ones scored while playing in silence. Insincerity, maybe, as long as we sometimes accept that the wisest thing to do is to play stupid in order to have access to an angle of investigating the people as they are.
You see the world as a casino. What is your favorite game?
The world, life in itself can be compared to this idea. Some people go to the slots, some prefer roulette, others play poker or some others simply hang out in the VIP rooms – all these are metaphors of our existence. Right now, roulette places first among my preferences, but I have been thinking of poker for a while.
photo:Ayline Setaghaian
Andreea Baron
Elegantine
You are a controversial character in the art world. There are critics who come after you but I have met many curators admiring your unique style. As a total, you sell paintings to a high class category, both in the country and abroad. Does your financial satisfaction weigh more than what the critics think?
With all due respect for the people thinking otherwise, money does not measure value. And neither do the papers issued by an institution. Maybe the time, but I am not totally sure about that. What is sure is that I come from a family of artists, my friends are artists and from whom I have stolen both technique and also the treasures of apprenticeship. I do not think I can speak about a financial satisfaction, I am not Warhol, and the paintings are not sold as hot cakes. You can make a lot of money in a short time and for a ferw months after I can sit and look at the walls. This is an artist’s life! And the satisfaction you were talking about earlier does not come from money, but from the identity of the buyers, people of a certain cultural standard, art collectors who choose to buy my works.
But you are now attending the classes of the Center of Excellence in the Study of Image….
I say it again, I do not believe in papers, but in facts, real facts. I am going to one of the master programs of the Center not because I needed to prove something, but rather that I wanted to gain more knowledge about movies and image from a different perspective.
You are an extremely beautiful woman. Has this fact helped in any way in your career?
I do not know how you see me, but I cannot see myself as a woman and even less as beautiful, denotivele speaking. I am far away from the ideal size, no perfect skin, not a ravishing beauty. But I am a girl who laughs a lot, who thinks herself as a child sometimes or a big woman other times and so on. I believe that beauty is adjustment. You could reply that this is how intelligence is defined. Well, they are maybe synonyms. In general, image matters a lot, and not only in what I am doing. It comes in package with a myriad of advantages, but for some reasons, it always brings trouble.
I have read many of your interviews and almost everywhere they were saying that unless you were the ‚Pearl of Masons’, you would not have been able to do so much. Are you really what they say?
I have been asking myself the same question. Jokingly or not, it is just a nickname and I have no connection with the freemasonry. And I am not sure either that those people know what they are talking about, they rather associate the idea with occult rituals and unorthodox practices, from the pleasure to explain or distort the image of very simple things. Four years ago, I received an award for my activity from an institution outside school, and it became a real aprodisiac for the imagination of young people with an appetite for rumors.
I need to admit that I have not seen you much around people of your age.
I have always and still looking for people I can learn something from, no matter the age. People with a well-defined system of values, similar to mine.
You mentioned about your system of values. What are your guiding principles?
I cannot remember who said that principles are the greatest prejudices. I really believe that the person was one who had done a lot of wrong to himself and wanted to feel less guilty. You do not have to go to the Sorbonne just to feel what is good and what is bad. For me, these are the two principles from which everything else comes, such as to be fair, to be sincere, to be loyal, to help, etc. In a nutshell, I believe in respect towards yourself, to the other next to you, by complying with certain moral laws that operate in the interhuman relations, like the driving laws for the motorists – to avoid, as much as possible, to leave victims behind you.
Your number one movie?
Godfather: ‚Great men are not born great. They grow great’.
Your greatest strength and weakness.
Scepticism gets me out of trouble, scepticism kills me.
1What is your resolution for 2014?
To learn and play poker. Literally and figuratively!
