Exhibition of Ioana Olăhuț: Fear, pain, hunger, by Alexandra Burtiuc

Ioana Olăhuț is a Romanian painter, who`s now a teacher of the painting department of the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca. She had exhibitions in the country and abroad too, with works that had as a theme  metamorphosis. Her style is a combination of Expressionism and Surrealism, in technique and themes, but what makes her works unique is her vision about the subjects that she chooses.

             Her recent exhibition is titled Fear, pain, hunger, which reminds us of the Expressionist most common themes. The exhibition is a collection of works from 2012 to 2016 which come after a period of black and white painting.

The images she had created made me feel like I was in a horror movie: the colors, the atmosphere, the subject, even the fact that the exhibition took place in the basement of the museum. And that feeling made me realize the power that those images have.

             The contrast that is most used for these paintings is a complementary one, between yellow and violet. It is said that this contrast is used for expressing the most dramatic situations and experiences, because it is the one that, to be balanced, needs more violet than yellow and pure violet is a lot darker than the pure yellow, making the painting darker just because of  the contrast. But the black that she used made everything even more intense and dramatic. There are paintings that are almost black and white like Dali and Galinacea, and there are, on the other side, paintings that are very colorful like Inward directed mortido II. The non-finito is very present in her work, being that invisible thing that guides the eyes of the viewers in a certain point of the painting. In some works this non-finito is a part where the color is dripping, in others is the part that is almost decorative or intentionally less worked.

The figures that express her concepts and ideas are humans, animals or even food--the exhibition is called hunger after all. But when it comes to people, the interest was not portraying them or studying the human body, expressions or proportions. In a lot of paintings the faces of the people  are actually missing or just sketched. For example, in the work named Two monks in front of my window there are two figures of men, with faces unclear, and that detail makes the image creepier than the subject itself. Or in the painting named The Maid where it is clear that it is not an anatomical study of the female body, nor a study of her expression, it is about  virginity as a subject.

The painting that I liked the most, was the one named Chicken`s Nightmare. This one is about a little chicken smashed by giant strawberries. The contrast is the same, violet and yellow, the dripping is there too. But leaving aside the fact that strawberries are my favorite, I find interesting the subject itself. She really imagined what the nightmare of a chicken might be and she concluded that this is the most relevant possibility. I find this one amusing, a dark humor actually, but it still made me smile just because I imagined it to be real.

The exhibition was opened on 27^th April, and in case you want to see it, it will be open till 15^th May, between 10 am to 5 pm, at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca.