Tiberiu Chelcea

Statement

My work investigates the physical and tangible beauty of mass-produced technological/scientific objects and texts, as well as their relationship with our recent past and our outdated ways of doing things. As technological products become obsolete at an increasingly rapid pace, my work uses these recently discarded objects and mines them for new meanings. In particular, the works in the "Trigonopoetry" series creates paintings that incorporate new phrases from old trigonometry textbooks; these phrases are sometimes silly and sometimes profound, but never faithful to the original authoritative voice of the text.

Artworks

Each work from the "Trigonopoetry" series starts with pages from two trigonometry textbooks from 1920's. Certain words forming new sentences are masked out on each leaf, and the pages are painted over. The actual composition and style for the paintings are inspired by the illustrations in the books: the style is generally hard-edge, and, for this painting, a diagram from the original pages is actually used in the composition.

Each work from the "Trigonopoetry" series starts with pages from two trigonometry textbooks from 1920's. Certain words forming new sentences are masked out on each leaf, and the pages are painted over. The actual composition and style for the paintings are inspired by the illustrations in the books: the style is generally hard-edge, and, for this painting, a diagram from the original pages is actually used in the composition.