Victor Man

Biography

Victor Man (b. 1974, Cluj, Romania) creates paintings that are ripe with memories, metaphors, and contradictions. The artist is known for small-format portraits and still lifes that have a common symbolic or allegorical character. Their content, however, defies clear interpretation. Man explores painting as a site where knowledge and consciousness are caught in a perpetual state of motion—things are remembered, forgotten, change appearance, and their location in time is never fixed and continually repositions itself. Through non-linear narratives, Man merges and dilutes the lines between past and present, fiction and reality; figures are removed from time and refuse resolution.

Simultaneously painted in an old-masterly style and handled in a contemporary manner, Man’s work reflects various influences of densely orchestrated combinations of images and language, history and fiction, and light and darkness. Taken as a whole, Victor Man’s work is a tour de force into the multiple dimensions of memory. For every image that is carefully evoked from the recesses of history, there are many others that are plunged into the slippery abyss of remembrance and amnesia.

Victor Man lives in Cluj, Romania and Rome, Italy. Man represented Romania at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in public institutions including El Candelero, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Zephir, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, traveled to Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, and Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, Germany (2014); Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg (2012); The Painting, the Drawing, and Other Objects and Situations, Kunsthalle Lingen, Lingen, Germany (2011); If Mind Were All There Was, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2009); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2009); Centre international d'art et du paysage Ile de Vassivière, Beaumont-du-Lac, France (2009); and On Relative Loneliness, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy (2008). Man’s work is represented in international public collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Centre International d'art et du paysage de Vassivière, Beaumont-du-Lac, France; Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Mudam Luxembourg, Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, France; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Tate, London, UK.

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