Virgil Mocanu

Here is another artist in the field of ambiental ceramics, who comes to confirm both the value of the domain as a whole and the essential changes that have occurred within it in the last few years.

By her exhibition from the “Galacteea” Galleries, seen as an explicit display of the workshop programme, Lucretia Milea supplies arguments for an interference line, through an interdisciplinary action without offending or denying the traditions acquired in the course of time. The first observation, if we were to make a brief analysis of essence and vocabulary, would point out the fact that, without missing the generic sense of the genre, her ceramics asserts a certain autonomy of expressiveness that detaches itself from the obsession of the established decorative art. The forms are thought by an accurate geometrician who aims at purism especially through their special effect, in a virtual dialogue with the light and the environment and their division into sections has in view not only a chance for the utilitary finality, that one of a vase for floral compositions, but also the making up of a labyrinthic game with a really expressive effect. To say nothing of the fact that operating a forced telescoping of the perspective through volumetric reductions, the volume of the perfect cube gives us an impression of a scenography of mystery, maybe due to the symbols of the fine lace, both decorative arabesque and demonstration of artisanal professional skill.
We could also mention a visible and natural tendency towards the classical balance that is the rule which gathers, under the same accolade, the form of the object, always rectangular or circular, the texture of the material and the chromatics, mostly the clear, light white suggesting the nostalgy of the archetypal Elada.
But the addition of the nets, lace having an allusive and ornamental function, moves the emphasis on a possible exuberant baroque, suddenly revealing the ludic dimension of the process.
We witness a sort of dialogue between temptations, not with diverging, controversial replies but with complementary ones, like an argument supporting the idea of interference and mutual fertilization.
We can draw the conclusion that, shaping a universe of forms and subjective symbols, the artist joins the large area of the contemporary problems which characterize the searches in the field of the ceramics, freed from the prejudice of the minor decorative. Viewed independently as the result of the lucid effort of a strong personality in quest of herself or seen in the fertile and challenging context of the today's Romanian ceramics, Lucretia Milea's artistic creation asserts its own qualities, complex value and vocation of belonging to the field of prospecting towards a new position of the object having the value of signs, that is equal to the hard task, difficult but, at the same time, offering the joys of the responsible talent, able of assuming a significant part from the general effort for a newly dimensioned art.