Orange Houses 

Curator: Here we have “Orange Houses” by Alexandru Ciucurencu. The piece employs acrylic paint with an impasto technique. What are your initial thoughts on this work? Editor: It makes me think of childhood drawings—the way a kid simplifies a building down to basic shapes. But the color…that intense orange feels strangely melancholic. Curator: Precisely. The juxtaposition is striking. The composition features these very rudimentary geometric forms, immediately recognizable as houses. Yet, Ciucurencu doesn’t present a literal representation. Editor: It’s almost a memory of a place, hazy and dreamlike, not quite real. It’s the kind of place I feel I might have visited but can’t actually recall. Curator: That aligns well with the hallmarks of modernism. Ciucurencu moves beyond mere imitation of form, delving into an exploration of the very essence of “house-ness,” its structure distilled. Editor: The colors also pull you in. That almost monochromatic use of orange and yellows create such a dominant palette. They bleed into one another which enhances this sense of being ‘almost there.’ Curator: Notice too the impasto technique. Ciucurencu has applied the paint thickly. That texture suggests a physicality, which again is working at odds with the abstraction inherent in the composition. It becomes an object more than just a picture. Editor: Absolutely! There’s this beautiful tension between simplicity and complexity that keeps the eye moving and engaged. It seems joyful and brooding at the same time. Curator: Well, for me, engaging with the work means engaging with the dialogue it creates between representation and abstraction, its color harmonies and disharmonies. Editor: For me, the beauty of a piece lies not in perfect interpretation, but in that lingering emotional residue, like the scent of a forgotten place brought back by a color.