Florica Prevenda - Instances | by Cătălin Davidescu | 37-38, 2021
Florica Prevenda’s work, as it has stood out until now could represent an argument against the idea of generation. If biologically speaking but also from the point of view of its artistic affinity it is more and more integrated in the disputed generation of the 80s, her entire creation stands out differently in essence. The coordinates on which Florica Prevenda builds her approach are rather different from those that we might define as “generational”: she is not a furious artist, she did not adopt the forms of the Neo-expressionism which had characterized that epoch, but promoted her image singularly, without adhering to the idea of team. Of course that we can notice some affiliations in her creations from the epoch but these are blurred by a route which was meant to be closer to the next generation, that of the 90s which—even if less famous—created the bridge towards that of the 2000s. Thus, we could read Florica Prevenda’s visual developments as a dialogue or as a continuous reference to the immediate present. Perhaps precisely this type of alignment generates the impression —which as a matter of fact is true—that her creation is timeless. I do not think of timelessness in the proper sense of the word, but in terms of artistic works which, even if they claim to be part of a recent visual phenomenon, are difficultly assigned to a period, movement, trend, school. On the whole, her creation has a coherent evolution which finds its logic in its own artistic development, being in a way isolated from the general trajectory of our art. Maybe from this started the feeling of some art critics that the artist lives beyond the national space of expression.
The exhibition Instances opened in Baia Mare at the half of June in the impeccably restored place of the old art colony of painting having rendered the place famous, is a retrospection of the stage 2017-2019, one of the most productive in her creation. Conceived in the vision of the curator Magda Predescu, the manifestation focuses on the most important moments, outlining on cycles but not didactically, under the form of an installation, a selection of over 30 works representative for this period.
As it is presented within the art colony of painting from Baia Mare, Florica Prevenda’s creation seems to be the result of an inexhaustible energy through which the artist wanted to “sing” in almost all the scales she had practiced. Although she apparently embraces the modern show, we can perceive that in reality it is only a way of creating in a complete agreement with the recognized values of painting. Her works, composed in the harmony of tradition, devise stories in which we find no animosity, resentment, rage of a social or other nature. Although everything happens in an apparent indifference towards the aesthetic doctrines or towards any other dominant norm, the artist builds her visual universe without exhuming any radical theory.
One of the central motifs is the human face that she blurs until becomes only an outline, focusing on an inventory of geometrical signs distributed sternly on monochrome surfaces. Interested in the exploration of human existence, the thematic process revolves round subjects such as the obsessions of the present, people of the Net, of the computers, shadows of the present but also of Time regained, Serenity etc.. It is a complex world, it is the nowadays world that the artist examines with adequate acuity and towards which she manifests an explicit involvement.
The compositional structures created are sinusoidal lines with multiple foreshortenings and with chromatic matter arranged in successive layers until it comes out into relief, offering consistency to its visual trajectories most of the times composed in the technique of collage, of assemblage. The collage is a method of visual expression which had started spreading and being discussed in our country ever since the inter-war period and the vanguardists but its echo was rather small. Those from the last surrealist wave (such as Gherasim Luca, Dolfi Trost, Paul Paun, Virgil Teodorescu) might have stirred up some interest, and in fact especially even more scandal. Maybe, at the beginning of their careers, pupils such as Radu Petrescu, M.H. Simionescu which shall constitute the School from Târgovişte might have made collages but subsequently they chose the performance in the literary field. Even Ţuculescu made in the 60s some collages that haven’t been exhibited; it is certain that this form of expression started being used in our country only towards the end of the sixth decade at the same time as the Sigma group.
Refusing an intense emotional involvement like many of her colleagues of generation, the artist creates this type of collages/assemblages or sculptural paintings as a way of representing the world according to her own perception. She refuses any improvisation, the hazard of the found objects in order to perfectly control the surface infused with the nostalgia of a hidden geometry of the painting. The broad nervures, the play between the full and the empty, between light and shadow, between straight and curved lines offer her constructions an environmental dimension. What Florica Prevenda practices becomes a superior form of collage meaning that her proposals do no longer have an incidental, experimental character, but they make up an assumed research program. Many are alto-reliefs, made of different materials, with complex textures. But, unlike her predecessors, she builds her collages like some paintings. It is a figurative art composed according to the laws of painting where the colour is replaced with varied materials whose structure and thickness replace the vibration of touches, building the dynamics of the surface. The effect is surprising, offering that necessary ludic note. The artist has attentively searched for a long time the right expression and now I think she has found it.
Each stage in her creation can be considered a reaction, or rather a type of reference to painting understood in its traditional parameter, as well as a form of assuming and surpassing it. That is to say, Florica Prevenda is a visual artist who understands very well the artistic contemporary phenomenon and who perceived how important is the role of memory in any creative project.