C R I T I Q U E S

Claracarat has became a recognizable name in the art landscape of our times. Her courageous, uninhibited handling of the visual arts medium offers a a new, unusual imagery articulation which we, the audience, realize with no delay that belongs to us, but in the same extent it is also us. The esthetical sense of a viewer when confronted with a piece of valuable art is that of participation, and this is what we acquire when we contemplate Claracarat's works - both the sense of an artist defining her visual intentions, but also the realization of a contact with a mysterious, post-factum, deja vu. 

The modernity of Claracarat's paintings is striking for the some viewers, and it simply incites them to physically feel those works — so, often people, not trusting their stare, reach out, trying to touch Claracarat's canvassess (the artist having to bar them from doing so). Painting (because this is what actually we are talking about), means in the first place ILLUSION. And the achievement of inciting in viewers a fascinated, if not even a halucinatory state it's what gives painting its unique, spiritual quality that sets it apart of photography. The public's unease when confronted with the contemporaneous conceptual art has caught many artists in the trap-like self-fulfilling necessity of shocking the „spectators" — but this is not the art Claracarat offers us. Her painting is not just a psycho-visual game, but a visual-esthetical universe which we indeed yearn for, as we are enveloped by the, alas! relentless, self-updating modernity which besieges us. Indeed, Claracarat's works do possess identity and also they generate an ambiental, aural halo. Her art goes beyond cultural, local limits, transcending into a much larger cultural realm. And this transcending quality gives her works a visual presence which befits both modern architectural spaces or museums Remarkable are her chromatic dystrophies which render with style and elegance a quite particular, whimsical, dreamy universe. An universe playfully brimming with material insertions - The Stone Flowers, The Philosopher, UFO, Metal Aralc, Psyhedelic Sphere, Akteus Pyramid Paradox join there the Galaxy's orbit in a true artistical explosion. The Explosion is an explosion of beauty, and I am certain that its, and other Claracarat works' beauty, offers defining answers — and questions, also — to our century's art. 

Gabriel Stan 

“METAMORPHOSIS” – A Claracarat Exhibition at the Brasov KronArt Gallery

Virgil Borcan – January 13, 2016

While precipitations-wise last year’s December was dry, it still gave us some quite rewarding cultural events like the KronArt Gallery’s the “Metamorphosis” exhibition which presents to Brasov’s art audience the work of Claracarat, a daughter of this town for long living in Germany. (Exhibition open at KronArt Gallery the entire month of January, 2017) 

Challenging as it might appear at first contact, Claracarat’s paintings (or rather artifacts) introduce us to a vision which synthesizes the micro and the macro universe in one world – and while neither paintings, nor installations, those uniformly rectangular structures have a striking esthetical value.  

In stylized portraits, weathered grays, browns, coppers or purple are cleverly highlighted by material additions (a feather, a sift or a piece of copper), thus marking the twilight space which lurks between human and abstract, and between naïf art and avant-garde subtle representations. 

Inciting as these works are, they are also complemented by the “visual reading pact” of their titles, like Rust, Galactic Radio, Parallel Universe (a remarkable work, indeed), or Psychedelic Sphere.

An established artist in Germany, the United States, France and elsewhere, Claracarat, who hails from Brasov, is a pleasant gift for her hometown folks. And we cannot but appreciate her work – as well as KronArt Gallery curator’s, Gabriel Stan, gracious support.

http://www.larevista.ro/metamorfoze-expozitie-claracarat-la-galeria-kronart-din-brasov/

Between The Remote and The Closeness

a Claracarat Paintings Exhibition at KronArt Gallery, Brasov

Mircea Doreanu – January 5th, 2016

A lovely elf, half Edith Piaf, half biker, Claracarat paints (actually works, because she oftentimes ads to her canvasses concrete materials) much like a master. And risky as it might sound, her style can be described as a sort of abstract pointillism, which, while owing to Seurat’s and Signac’s the minute touch-work, has a different but intriguing esthetical self-fulfillment. 

Continuing the comparisons, Claracarat’s Kron-Art gallery exhibition falls somewhere between Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock, resembling with the first, contrasting with the second one – and it’s this acordeon-like, playful change of focus between the remote and the close-by which  betrays to the gallery visitor the nature of this exhibit. Playful, yet explosive – and the Explosion is the very sign of Claracarat’s artistic nature. 

Claracarat’s artistic ingenuity and savvy playfulness with the medium’s possible styles transpires through her invocations of totems – in obvious manner, like in OKOT, or as a fuzzy presence in the Akteus Pyramid Paradox. Then, Sunset of Valencia – is this a false peisage or a true, yet astutely faked landscape? But probably it would be superfluous to speak amongst these works about totems’ and symbols’ magical and thaumaturgical value, and about their pervasive presence in arts.  

Paintings titles are just emblems, paradigms or hints, but, like her Eye Tracker and Color Tunnel works, the titles also show a good knowledge of the other arts realms – and, alas! while invoking Maeterlink here, we cannot help noticing  how the osmosis of arts seems to stubbornly haunt the “modernaires”, Claracarat y compris …

But the panache of the artistic inspiration is always tamed by the rationality of a gallery exhibition, fact which KronArt confirms by aligning the paintings according to their tonalities sequence – still, plenty of opportunity for detecting these works’ flares of originality.  

Whimsical, and occasionally brazenly contrasting nature these works exude. The Funny Fish and The Phoenix Bird are pleasantly decorative, but others got plenty of „THAT cosmic feel” –  not that strange thing though, for a realm (i.e. Germany, Claracarat’s adoptive place), which came up with things like the Tangerine Dream or the Kraftwerk....  

Whimsicality or cosmic feel notwithstanding, the paintings’ incisiveness is often sometimes by smart overlapping of concrete matter like strips of smooth fabric and so on, over the paintwork itself  – and these juxtapositions offer a good starting point for a “Is this thing, reality, really fractured?” meditation. 

Totems, taumaturgy, whimsicality, cosmic feel, then... could our age arts lack a tinge of dystopia in their attempt to render these times’ compasslessness and anxieties? No, and the Metal City,  Claracarat’s intense dystopian vision shows this – metal-looking chunks of fading matter force the mind in an infinity teeming with skulls. This is a work which deserves to get a place a museum, indeed. 

Claracarat succeeds in bringing in magical colors without formally invoking magic – and blue, the blue of The Blue Planet – is this painter’s most striking hue. But other times, reds of keen choice, or like in the Lava Field, the ample gradient of dark colors let the viewer wander among potential meanings (not unlike how the creeping dampness plagues on houses did inspire da Vinci). Claracart’s shapes and colors are not sharp – they creep in our mind as forms fearing our blunting perception limits. 

However, fanciful as it may appear, Claracarat’s painting is a actually a rational act, which succeeds to convey exactly the irationality of imagination, and succeeds to upset this state of things. I might be wrong, but trying to figure out her roots in the Romanian manners of artistic expression, I can think of her paintings related somehow with traditional church processional banners, or (but not necessarily Olt area), folk tapestry works, or... Horia Bernea’s paintings. And I’d like to see her art successfully fulfilling such a trajectory – and since here, the Brincusi, Mademoiselle Pogany-resembling shape of Claracarat’s semi-figurative Ademondra is a good harbinger. 

For those in an uneasy relationship with art, this type of expression might ease them back into painting’s folds. 

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LAREVISTA.RO, May 10, 2017/ Mircea Doreanu review: “Between The Remote and The Closeness: Claracarat painting exhibition at KronArt Gallery – Brasov (Kronstadt) Romania: December 12th, – 2016  January 12th 

http://www.larevista.ro/distante-apropieri-performanta-expozitie-claracarat-la-kronart/