Invitation for Ladies to an Erotic Dinner in Ruins 2008

Editor: We're looking at Iurie Matei's "Invitation for Ladies to an Erotic Dinner in Ruins" from 2008, rendered in oil paint. I find the juxtaposition of classical figures with the bizarre arrangement of floating apples… well, it's pretty strange. What stands out to you? Curator: It's the interplay of materials and their symbolic loading. Notice the contrast between the meticulously rendered figure and the more loosely painted background. The material processes reflect a tension between tradition and disruption. Consider too, the canvas itself – what is its provenance? Editor: That’s a good point! It looks like maybe even a beginner could learn techniques for oil-painting from how this artist manipulated it on the canvas! Are the apples somehow related to that interplay, too? Curator: Precisely. Apples have varied cultural connotations – temptation, knowledge, beauty, discord. By using them abundantly and strangely here, Matei calls into question not only the image’s representational role, but our expectations of painting’s capacity to symbolize a multitude of themes such as seduction, power and maybe even entropy or even just plain absurdity.. Are they fresh, or rotten? Where do they originate, who harvests them, and at what cost? What sort of labor is invisibly implicated in its status as "art"? Editor: So it is the painting’s own “materials” like the apples, the location, the surface medium, the female figure in addition to being subject-matter are what convey symbolic weight to the viewer, right? Curator: It also forces us to consider production itself, disrupting assumptions of seamless, transcendent meaning. The artist may be interested in our unacknowledged role as a patron. Do the resources utilized to produce it implicate you? Editor: That definitely makes me reconsider my initial interpretation. Thank you! Curator: A fruitful conversation. The artwork is a vessel for us to engage in difficult questions, no matter our background.