Untitled 1989

Curator: We’re standing in front of an untitled work by Aurel Cojan, painted in 1989. It's an acrylic on canvas piece. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Total chaos, in a beautiful way. It looks like a blizzard of color, but a really gentle one. Does that make sense? I’m immediately drawn in. It's like my mind projecting onto a blank canvas—only this one's already wonderfully, messily filled. Curator: I can see that. Cojan worked in a period where Abstract Expressionism was undergoing a kind of re-evaluation. Galleries and museums were key in legitimizing a second wave of abstraction, so to speak, often diverging from the heroic narratives of the New York School. Editor: Right. You see these swirling brushstrokes, layers upon layers… I imagine him attacking the canvas, but also being very delicate with the overlay. It feels spontaneous, yet controlled. I love the way the white background peeks through; it gives it air, space. Curator: The “allover” composition—no central focus—is typical of the era, a nod to predecessors like Pollock, but Cojan adds his own twist. You've mentioned spontaneity, but works like these were, paradoxically, heavily curated by museums in retrospectives, adding new meaning. The artist's intentions, perhaps, becoming secondary. Editor: Funny how things are perceived in context. I am fascinated how museums can affect a piece... And the splotches of red pop, don't they? They're like little rebellious hearts beating in this flurry of paint. What does allover-ness tell us about what it means to see nothing and everything at once? Curator: The institutional frameworks that shape our viewing habits certainly encourage looking at this work holistically, where brushstroke and pigment become metaphors for existence itself. It’s interesting you pinpoint the color: how did public tastes shape those bold color decisions back then, and are those colors still speaking to us? Editor: True! Seeing a raw statement of what it means to have many perspectives with allover color like this makes you think the viewers get to complete a lot more of this picture. Like this one is a place we all meet to see some sense in our individual expression! Curator: Absolutely. Cojan's untitled piece invites dialogue, debate, and reflection on our place in a world saturated with images and history. Editor: For me, it's an honest conversation with myself. Raw. Vulnerable. Perfectly imperfect.