Liviu Alexa's solo debut - the Winter Olympics of amputated octopuses or the Last Supper during lockdown

by Mela Dasein

"We are the Apocalypse" represents the first solo exhibition of journalist Liviu Alexa, a surprising incursion of a journalist, analyst, author into neo-expressionist painting. The exhibition at the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum reveals another side of a man known to the public for uncomfortable journalistic subjects, for his political stance and the "Strict Secret" substack.

The exhibition, curated by Dan Breaz and organized with the support of the Cluj County Council, gathers a significant number of works that explore personal apocalyptic themes in the original key through a brutal figurative painting, chromatically violent, with compositional accents that can be easily framed as "dare". The opening took place on February 12, in the presence of university professor Dr. Lucian Nastasă-Kovács, the manager of the museum and of the univ. dr. Ioan Sbârciu.

No, non lo fanno "per…”, lo fanno "per!"

The title of the exhibition, "We are the Apocalypse", is not an abstract statement, but an actual reading key to the entire series. Alexa seems to be laying on canvas an inner apocalypse, the one that everyone carries within themselves and does not have the courage to reveal. However, the author breaks the barriers, transforming personal anxieties into collective themes and into uncomfortable visual narratives.

His works operate on the border between the figurative and the fantastic, between frugal realism and a liberating fantasy universe. Liviu Alexa's language does not seek to please. His works shout, point the finger, accuse, assume deformity and the grotesque as a form of honesty.

The exhibited canvases bear equally evocative and provocative titles: "Nightmare with the king who lost his cat (Nightmare of the King Who Lost His Cat)", "New show in town: LIVE angelification", "Judas is busy today", "Madonna dell"Emoji, protetter dei Polpi (Emoji saint, protector of octopuses)".

Each work builds its own narrative universe, but subject to the unifying idea of judgment without management. Liviu Alexa's universe is populated by hybrid and deliberately alienated characters - fallen kings, domesticated monsters, angels adapted to the environment, online apostles. The colors are bold, sometimes aggressive; the black and brown that occupy large spaces are "broken" by shades of incandescent red, poisonous yellow, violent purple, all applied bravely, almost contemptuously, in a manner that betrays expressive urgency rather than a concern for neat and decorative finish.

“Tu stai servendo, però non sei un servo"

Liviu Alexa is an atypical figure in the Romanian media landscape. And he loves to feed the public perception of a "bad boy". But his literary art (and now also the visual one) also shows us something else. Alexa cultivates a fascination for literature, travels in yellow sneakers or through the codes of the mind, philosophy, and pop culture. His substack alternates between political analysis, essays on film and literature, personal reflections on fatherhood and life. And he somehow manages to alternate with core and fun texts about prostitutes and the terrible nostalgia of Cinema Paradiso. This vortex of ideas and feelings is also reflected in his painting labeled "artist", but probably from the need to exorcise very visual inner demons and to give form to states that words cannot fully encompass. We will have the opportunity to wonder at the next exhibitions, which will certainly not be long in coming. Liviu Alexa declares in writing that he refuses to be liked, a kind of Titanic Waltz enriched with fine humor and an understanding attitude towards the sins of modernity. The author's ecstatic report on Roberto Benini's masterpiece, La Vita e Bella, shows us that beyond the sharp words hides a sensitive, even romantic artist. Liviu Alexa sells expensively, perhaps because he proposes an art of male vulnerability exposed without too many filters.