Temporary Exhibitions
Curator Maria Bilașevschi
In contemporary critical discourse, there are few instances in which the image manages to recover the sacred, primordial dimension of the surrounding world without falling into the trap of the idyllic. Valentina Druțu’s exhibition proposes this balance through a visual discourse of rare conceptual density, all the more so as the artist does not idealize nature, but recovers it as a philosophy of eternal return. The centrality of the female figure, flanked by botanical morphologies and totemic-animal presences, resemanticizes the canvas as an axis mundi, a space of archetypal confluences. The artist rejects the linearity of historical time, that of degradation and interwoven chronologies, in favor of a mythical, circular time and, precisely for this reason, Valentina Druțu’s exhibition does not propose an immersion in a biological reality, but in a paradigm of germinative states. The artist constructs a visual territory suspended between the sacred revelation of nature and the whispered moment of inner experience, rejecting static monumentality in favor of a dynamic of fluidity. Thus, flowers and vegetal structures are not captured in a decorative guise, but in full existential pulsation, a botany of interiority where petals function as screens, porous filters, capable of absorbing the flow of light and, to the same extent, the inner tension of matter. The animal silhouettes imagined by Valentina Druțu bear the imprint of a primordial melancholy. They do not populate the space as decorative elements, but master it as silent witnesses. There is an assumed fragility in the gaze of these creatures, a silent dialogue that the artist mediates between the viewer and wild otherness. Going beyond simple visual seduction, the selection of works becomes a profound interrogation of the sacred concealed within the organic fiber. In Valentina Druțu’s iconography, the female figure occupies a central role, becoming a metaphysical link between the vegetal and the animal. The woman is not rendered within the coordinates of an easy or fashionable beauty, but as a hieratic presence. Between epidermis and leaves, between the melancholic gaze of the female figure and the chromatic pulsation of nature, a tension suspended outside time is created. In a fragmented world, Valentina Druțu’s painting becomes an act of resistance, an attempt to heal the original rupture between human and nature. Compositional rigor, the deliberate pictorial gesture and the feverish brushstroke aspire to rediscover a lost harmony. Everything is arranged within a sacred geometry of proximity, demonstrating that within the smallest fragment of living matter, the code of the entire universe pulses intact.
Maria Bilașevschi, art critic
Cultural manager and visual artist, Valentina Druțu, born in 1968 in Urechești, Bacău County, Romania, lives and works in Iași, carrying out a sustained and diverse activity on the national and international fine arts scene. The artist organizes numerous exhibitions, with extensive activity, particularly in the fields of painting and interior design, as well as in curatorship, coordination and organization of events within the Iași Art Museum.
A graduate of the “G. Enescu” Academy of Art in Iași, Faculty of Fine Arts, Decorative Arts and Design, class of 1995, in the class of Prof. Univ. Liviu Suhar, specializing in painting, she became a member of the Union of Plastic Artists of Romania, Iași branch, in 1996, and, since 2006, a member of the UAPR Board of Directors. Beginning in 1995, she worked at the Art Museum, National Museum Complex Moldova Iași – Palace of Culture, as a museum curator, becoming director of this museum between 2007–2021, and returning to this position in 2024 to the present day. Between 7 December 2021 and 25 January 2024, she held the position of manager within the same institution, and in the same year she completed her doctoral studies at the “G. Enescu” National University of Arts in Iași, in the field of visual arts, with the qualification MAGNA CUM LAUDE. In the fields of painting and interior design, she is one of the representative artists of her generation, her works being found in museum and private collections in the country and abroad. (U.S.A., United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.
She has curated over 200 exhibitions and coordinated competitions dedicated to visual art, serving as a member of specialist juries in the country and abroad. She has held over 30 solo exhibitions and participated in over 150 group exhibitions both in the country and abroad. She maintains an extensive activity in the field of interior design, creating representative works.
2000 - MARGARETA STERIAN National Prize for organizing the retrospective exhibition OTTO BRIESE (1889-1963) and producing the exhibition catalogue
2012 - UAPR Iași Prize - for curatorship: “Swedish Bread and Caviar” Exhibition - Swedish artists from Stockholm - Huddinge
2013 - UAPR Iași Prize - for curatorship: “Mixed Greeks” Exhibition - artists from Thessaloniki - Greece.
2013 - Romanian National Committee ICOM Prize - for the thematic concept and redesign of the Poni-Cernătescu Museum in Iași
2018 - Jury Prize at the ARTIS Iași Artists’ Salon
2021 - Painting Prize at the ARTIS Iași Artists’ Salon
2022 – Prize of the Board of Directors of the UAP Romania (For painting and overall activity) HĂRMAN-BRAȘOV UAP Awards Gala for 2021
2025 - Second Prize for Painting – National Painting Biennial Constanța – Art Museum.
2025 - First Prize for Painting – ARTIS Salon Iași
