Untitled 

Curator: Right, let's talk about this untitled piece, mixed-media—acrylic paint primarily, it appears—by Ligia Macovei. A wonderful dive into abstraction. Editor: My first thought is just... restless energy. Look at the frenzy of brushstrokes! A sort of dreamscape caught mid-explosion, all swirling earth tones wrestling with cool blues. It almost vibrates. Curator: "Restless" is perfect. Macovei certainly wasn't interested in tranquility here! Speaking materially, I see that thick layering. It is an almost sculptural use of paint to create form without fully committing to form. See the textures, how they push the boundaries between painting and… relief? Editor: It also prompts the question—how much labor, how many layers and trials went into something so ostensibly loose? Each frantic brushstroke becomes almost absurd when you realize the calculation behind appearing so raw. Curator: Absolutely! I imagine Macovei standing back, reassessing, adding, subtracting... you can almost feel her presence hovering over it. While it leans toward abstract expressionism, the fauvist colors do peek through in certain spots—those brilliant oranges really sing against the darker blues, don’t they? Editor: They scream! There is an intentional dissonance there. How far can you push these colors against one another before the whole thing falls apart into garish chaos? And, of course, whose standards are dictating "chaos" to begin with? What were Macovei's source materials? Pigments ground by hand, mass-produced tubes? That informs our interpretation, surely. Curator: Well, regardless, the effect is quite powerful! And given it’s untitled, we can project almost anything onto it—landscape, figures… emotions made visible. You sense this constant pushing, and that refusal to settle is so palpable, so present. Editor: Exactly. And that presence demands we consider the materiality not just of the paints themselves, but of her entire working environment, her lived reality feeding this explosion of energy on the canvas. So much of the process remains stubbornly *there*, clinging to the surface. It refuses to dematerialize into pure aesthetics. Curator: Yes! I find myself drawn into the depth she achieves. Editor: Definitely. This really invites me to appreciate the intense physical processes involved.