"At the MoBU 2024 International Art Fair, the Scemtovici & Benowitz Gallery presents a series of unique works by Olimpiu Bandalac, a visual artist, video producer, and performer represented by the gallery.

A renowned creator with an impressive career, he holds a significant professional experience ranging from artistic experimentation to gestural abstract painting, photography, graphics, illustration, and directing animated art films. A complex artist and a subject of study in art history and theory courses at art institutions in Romania, Olimpiu Bandalac will be present at the gallery's stand with paintings created over several months. The display consists of a selection of these works with an informal gestural character, created through repeated layers of pictorial matter that must be understood together with the structure of the paper and the changing materiality achieved through the continuous addition of colors. Like a focused and efficient alchemist, Olimpiu Bandalac experiments by painting directly with his fingers, using pure pigments, dry pastels, watercolors, inks, and acrylic colors on handmade paper, which he prepares himself.

The selection presented for MoBU is created by the artist at the request of the gallery and the curator. The works have not been exhibited before, thus representing a small personal exhibition under the sign of the artist's credo in painting.

Born in 1955 in Brașov, Olimpiu Bandalac lives and works in Bucharest. His works are held in private collections and public collections such as: MNAC Bucharest, MARE Museum Bucharest, Brașov Art Museum, Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, State University Museum São Paulo. At the MoBU fair, the artist is exhibiting for the second time, having first been presented by the Scemtovici & Benowitz Gallery in a solo exhibition."

- Raluca-Ilaria Demetrescu