On Thursday, May 9, 2026, the painting exhibition entitled Solar Manuscripts, belonging to the artist couple Brînduşa Bontea and Radu Florea, will be opened in the Contemporary Art Hall of the Golești Museum.
Brînduşa Bontea was born on February 14, 1973, in the city of Bacău. In 1991, she graduated from Calistrat Hogaş High School in Piatra Neamț, and in 1998 from the University of Arts- Bucharest, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Graphics, class of Professors Nistor Coita and Nicolae Alexi. She is a member of the Union of Fine Artists, Bucharest Branch, since 1998 and a member of VISARTA since 2013. She has had 7 personal exhibitions and over 30 collective exhibitions.
Radu Florea was born on January 3, 1973, in the city of Caracal. In 1991 he graduated from the Nicolae Tonitza Art High School in Bucharest, and in 1998 from the University of Arts- Bucharest, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting, Class of Professor Florin Mitroi. He has had 6 personal exhibitions and over 30 collective exhibitions.
“The Solar Manuscripts exhibition proposes a visual incursion in which the sacred space subtly dialogues with the profane space and chromatically interrogates the presence of the mystical. In Brândușa Bontea’s plastic universe, the angelic figure becomes the core of a poetics of light. Angels are true “solar manuscripts”, in which corporeality melts into “writing” and irradiation. Through broken strokes and diaphanous washes, these entities seem caught in a process of dissolution, subjected to a deliberate erasure that transforms them into fragile graphics. Another essential vein of her approach is the representation of the covenant crosses from the Gorj area. Intensely colored and loaded with the signs of the Oltenia tradition, they are integrated into the living structure of nature, placed on tree trunks or branches and function as “dwellings of the soul” during the 40-day period. In counterpoint, Radu Florea comes with a different approach to the sacred. He invites the viewer to a reading of absence, where the angel’s passage becomes more real than his physical presence. By presenting secular spaces in an advanced process of degradation or rather fragments of these spaces and using a restricted but carefully modulated chromatic palette, he contributes to establishing a tension between materiality and light, between consistency and evanescence.” (Critical text by Gabriela Tănase).
The Solar Manuscripts exhibition will remain on display at the Contemporary Art Hall of the Goleşti Museum until July 9, 2026.
The opening will take place on Saturday, May 9, 2026, at 1:00 p.m.
We look forward to seeing you!
Curator: Nicoleta Popa Grigore.
