Vasile Stefanoiu

Vasile Stefanoiu

Location: Romania

About me:
My Credo is: art must have a message. In my sculpture, marble, as matter, is revived, reinvented through art, after destruction.
I collect waste from the marble industry, including funerary monuments and make sculptures by direct carving with traditional tools: chisels, drills, abrasives, etc. which I use manually.
I sculpt on all sides in the "Ronde-bosse" system because it can be seen all around.
I am one of those sculptors who insist on making art in the traditional way, but without rejecting contemporary trends.
Sometimes I take sequences from the narrative context of some legends of ancient Greek civilization and sculpt the result of my imagination in a new way of seeing in the modern era, different, sometimes suggesting movement in the process of metamorphosis.
I like direct sculpture, taking advantage of the routine of my childhood in a small village (Ciuta in Romania) where next to my father I carved large stone crosses for sale, which I sculpted nasty angels, so I learned the craft of direct sculpture.
I made the leap from the craft of direct stone carving to artistic representation from a meeting, during my childhood, with the Romanian sculptor George Apostu, whom I saw carving in the yard of a house in Ciuta some strange shapes that did not resemble those products of village stonemasons (funerary monuments).
I've been looking for the answer for the rest of my life ever since.
In sculpture, I aim to produce the sensation of the real and to create images that are on the border between true and unreal, exploring that fine connection between authentic and artificial.
Contact: Vasile Stefănoiu; Phone: +40732 117 447
Web: vasilestefanoiu.ro; https://sculpture-network.org/.../51405/VasileStefanoiu
https://www.artconnect.com/profile/vasile-stefanoiu ; https://www.facebook.com/vasilestefanoiu/
https://www.instagram.com/vasile.stefanoiu; E-Mail: vasilestefanoiu09@gmail.com


Portfolio:

Marble sculptures made by direct carving.

Some of these sculptures is part of a series of sculptures that take sequences from the narrative context of legends of ancient Greek civilization and sculpt the result of my imagination in a new way of seeing in the modern era, different, sometimes suggesting movement in the process of metamorphosis.
In other sculptures I create relevant images that mark our lives.

Arachne – metamorphosis-side-front view “Arachne – metamorphosis-side-front view”

1. Artwork Title: “Arachne – metamorphosis”
• Marble & copper, the year of creation: © 2021.
• © All rights reserved
• Artwork dimensions :Height 70 cm, Width 37 cm Depth 19 cm, Weight 31 Kg
• Artist nation of origin: Romania
This sculpture is part of a series of sculptures that take sequences from the narrative context of legends of ancient Greek civilization and sculpt the result of my imagination in a new way of seeing in the modern era, different, sometimes suggesting movement in the process of metamorphosis.
The message conveyed through my sculpture is about the skilful, industrious and sensitive but at the same time strong woman, qualities that have remained eternal.
The message can also be read in another key: as a parable about the power of art and the secular antagonism between creativity and authority. Or about commercial competition, where the status of winner is the privilege only of the great and powerful, a dominant mechanism that has not changed from ancient civilization to the new contemporary gods of the era of globalization (large corporations).
In my sculpture, I created the moment of the metamorphosis of the young girl Arachne, by reducing her body, becoming a spider with a big belly from which she draws the thread (Poet Ovid).
In ancient Greek legend, the world's first spider was born out of a woman's pride.
The goddess Minerva (Athens, in the civilization of ancient Greece) was recognized as the most skilled weaver but a young girl, Arachne, surpassed her, although this girl "Neither by rank or nation is famous, but by skill" (Poet Ovid) .
In the competition between the two, the fabric of Athens was predictably large: a scene of Olympus and a tribute to the glory of the gods.
The canvas of the young girl Arachne is more beautiful, she surpassed the goddess in the craft, but in her canvas she described the gods as carnal beings whose whims, passions and petty jealousies create suffering in the lives of mortals.
In revenge, the goddess Minerva punished the young girl Aracne, tore her fabric and hit her forehead three or four times with a shuttle.
Arachne tried to hang herself but Minerva saves her by telling her "She lives, but still hanged" and sprinkles her with Hecatean poison (a herb of the goddess of the Hecate spells) and metamorphoses her into a spider to weave into eternity.
This legend has been represented in both painting and sculpture throughout the history of art, but all the images show a woman with more spider web arms. The novelty that I bring, a new way of seeing in the contemporary era, is the movement of the metamorphosis of the body of the young Arachne by shrinking and the transformation into the spider that weaves.

The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice “The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice”

carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 80 x 46 x 16 cm, weight 46 kg, marble, © Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work.
The ancient Greeks understood that all human dramas revolve around the ubiquitous and inevitable experience of loss. Greek mythology revolves around this essential paradox of human life.
Our time is limited, our control is limited and from this is born the great emotion of human existence. We love intensely, because we know that our mastery is weak.
The love story of Orpheus and Eurydice exemplifies this principle in all its heartbreaking beauty.
According to legend, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, dies at their wedding being bitten by a snake. Orpheus prays to the gods to allow him to save her, descending into hell to bring Eurydice back to life.
The gods allow him to try, but on one condition - he does not have to look back. Orpheus respected this condition until the threshold of hell; but when he was ready to cross the fatal frontier, driven by the fear and impatience of love, he looked back. At that moment, the gods are faithful to their cruel promise, and Eurydice is pulled back into darkness and thus loses his wife a second time.
The despair caused by the final loss of Eurydice made Orpheus despise and insult the women of Thrace. Eventually, exasperated, they retaliated by tearing him to pieces, prey to the ecstasy specific to bahic orgies.
After his death, the shadow of Orpheus descends underground, into hell, he finds Euridice, “he embraces her with longing. He walks along the same path / He comes after him, he goes forward and maybe / Without fear he looks back at Euridice. ” (Ovid, in "Metamorphoses", the eleventh book).
This last passage is the theme of my sculpture: when the shadow of Orpheus turns his head and looks at Eurydice without fear because the gods could no longer punish him.
I sculpted the two characters in unusual shapes because they are both in a dreamlike, unreal environment, in eternity, he is a shadow and she is an illusion. I sculpted the lower half of Orpheus in bas-relief, going through the strange place of hell and the upper part of the body in three dimensions. I sculpted Eurydice with her body shape in the negative

Icarus - the dream of freedom “Icarus - the dream of freedom”

Carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 101 x 74 x 37 cm, weight 28 kg. Marble, threaded iron and wood.
© Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work of art.
Icarus, the legend that stands as a testimony to one of man's greatest dreams: that of flying.
From childhood dreams to flights over seas and countries in commercial planes, space exploration, or more recently, space tourism, our appetite for air seems unquenchable.
But let's go back to ancient times, when the urge to fly was as alive as it is today.
Icarus is the son of Daedalus, presented in Greek mythology as an architect and sculptor, who helped build the famous labyrinth of Knossos in which Minos, the ruler of Crete, imprisoned the Minotaur and often brought virgins and lads as sacrifices to calm them down. lust for human flesh.
After a while, Daedalus, the village of sacrifices made for the Minotaur, plots with Theseus to kill the monster.
As punishment, Minos locks the architect Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth and builds the exit. But the ingenious Daedalus manages to make two pairs of wax and feather wings, for him and his son, who should have saved them.
Daedalus taught his son how to fly: "Icarus, floats in the middle, / I advise you, for too low you will go, it is loaded with water / The feathers, if too high, will burn them like the sun" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, the eighth book).
Icarus, fascinated by the beauty of flight and heights, gets too close to the Sun. The god Helios, angry that people have discovered the secret of the flight, melts with his heat the wings of Icarus, who collapses in the waters of the Aegean Sea and dies.
Icarus is the symbol of the man who tries to surpass himself, but excessive zeal, haste, inexperience and disobedience to parental advice kill his dream.
Whatever meaning we choose, the story remains enchanting and in its first, non-plasticized sense, in which the one who exalts Icarus is the dream of freedom, kept under the fragile wings of the dreamer and defended at the cost of his life.
With a little imagination we could bring the legend to our times when the dream of freedom was shattered by the Covid virus.

Pygmalion & Galateea - Metamorphosis “Pygmalion & Galateea - Metamorphosis”

Marble, the year of creation: © 2020,
• Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 75 x 42 x 18 cm.
• Artist nation of origin: Romania
© Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work of art..
I sculpted in marble the moment of metamorphosis, as described by the great poet Ovid, who lived the last years of his life in Romania at Tomis ((Constanta today), being forcibly exiled from Rome in the year 8 AD and was buried approx. 9 years later in the same locality. .
The moral of my sculpture: eternal beauty, found exclusively in art.
I sculpted the moment of the metamorphosis, setting in motion Galatea’s silhouette, abandoning the eternal condition in favor of the perishable.
Detachment of the statue to awakening to life leaving the body in the negative, revealing the sequence of movement from the right position of the statue to the downward position on the pedestal, both in front and behind the sculpture. I gave the free spaces meanings of stihii and centrifugal coverage, to suggest movement, with the appearance of a disorder assumed to contradict the static attitude of classicism, while the naked silhouette of Galatea benefits from retained details vaguely reminiscent of the classical manner.
At the top of the sculpture, in front, I carved the negative mark of the hand of the goddess Aphrodite that gave life to the statue. The features of Galatea's face are vague, without details.
I simply sculpted Pygmalion, without clothing details, I gave importance to the position of the body, after long hesitations between several variants and the facial expression is amazement and wonder for the miracle that took place. His face is slightly caricatured, expressive, specific to the contemporary style.

Prayer “Prayer”

• Stone , the year of creation: © 2020.
• Artwork dimensions: Height 40 cm, Width 15 cm Depth 15 cm, Weight 9 Kg
• Artist nation of origin: Romania
This sculpture was thought out for a long time and stylized, from the communist period, in response to the subversive attitude of the communist political regime in Romania before 1989, towards the faith in God of the people.
The idea of ​​this sculpture came to my mind when I noticed that people entered the church worried and scared not to be seen entering the religious place.
Especially those who held certain positions in the state, in the communist party or in large companies were not allowed to attend church.
When they left the church, after the religious processions were over, their facial expressions were completely different, they were serene and calm as if all their worries had remained there in the church.
The prayer is our direct connection with heaven because no matter how complicated the technological achievements, they can be deciphered analytically - and, after all, how simplistic they are compared to the miracle of the complexity of living organisms or the cosmic universe and its movements!
In the construction of prayer I focused on the fact that prayer itself has nothing to do with age or gender, it is pure spirit and it exists within us.
I structured my sculpture on three distinct elements: the head bowed before the divinity, with the chin on the chest so that the face is indistinguishable, folded hands in prayer and the kneeling as a sign of humbleness.

Fascination “Fascination”

“Fascination”, Walnut wood and marble, HeightWidthDepth 56 x 40 x 50 cm, Weight: 14 kg, carved © 2022
Technique: direct carving with traditional tools
I designed the sculpture by combining two particularly beautiful materials from nature: walnut wood and marble, on the principle of "conceptual art", where the idea ("idea art"), the conception, the process of the work, are considered more significant than the concrete, ultimate form of a certain creation.
This sculpture is part of the "Beauty of Walnut" series, where through direct sculpture I explored the texture, contrast and shape of walnut wood, carving on the cross sections of the wood, on the head of the fibers, where the wood. it is very hard, but reveals its dynamic beauty of growth.
The diversity and nature of the environment constantly provides me with both the challenge and the inspiration to push boundaries.
The two figures carved in marble are fascinated by the amazing technical changes in the world but also by the beauty created by nature in the structure of walnut wood.
Fascinating because in the last hundred years, humanity has experienced unprecedented innovation and change - from skyscrapers to the moon landing, to social media, to human rights and the democratization of art.
Right now in our society everything is moving very fast, time doesn't seem enough anymore, artists seem to find their way much harder, ongoing changes create the need for a continuous state of Transcendence and this is reflected in contemporary art.

The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice

Artwork Title: “The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice”, carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 80 x 46 x 16 cm, weight 46 kg, marble, © Protected by copyright.
This is a unique work.
The ancient Greeks understood that all human dramas revolve around the ubiquitous and inevitable experience of loss. Greek mythology revolves around this essential paradox of human life.
Our time is limited, our control is limited and from this is born the great emotion of human existence. We love intensely, because we know that our mastery is weak.
The love story of Orpheus and Eurydice exemplifies this principle in all its heartbreaking beauty.
According to legend, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, dies at their wedding being bitten by a snake. Orpheus prays to the gods to allow him to save her, descending into hell to bring Eurydice back to life.
The gods allow him to try, but on one condition - he does not have to look back. Orpheus respected this condition until the threshold of hell; but when he was ready to cross the fatal frontier, driven by the fear and impatience of love, he looked back. At that moment, the gods are faithful to their cruel promise, and Eurydice is pulled back into darkness and thus loses his wife a second time.
The despair caused by the final loss of Eurydice made Orpheus despise and insult the women of Thrace. Eventually, exasperated, they retaliated by tearing him to pieces, prey to the ecstasy specific to bahic orgies.
After his death, the shadow of Orpheus descends underground, into hell, he finds Euridice, “he embraces her with longing. He walks along the same path / He comes after him, he goes forward and maybe / Without fear he looks back at Euridice. ” (Ovid, in "Metamorphoses", the eleventh book).
This last passage is the theme of my sculpture: when the shadow of Orpheus turns his head and looks at Eurydice without fear because the gods could no longer punish him.
I sculpted the two characters in unusual shapes because they are both in a dreamlike, unreal environment, in eternity, he is a shadow and she is an illusion. I sculpted the lower half of Orpheus in bas-relief, going through the strange place of hell and the upper part of the body in three dimensions. I sculpted Eurydice with her body shape in the negative