Marcel Rusu

Marcel Rusu (b. 1989, Mediaș, Romania) is a contemporary artist living and working in Romania known for merging traditional and digital media to create hyperreal, socially engaged works that often reflect on architectural space, identity, and the socio-political landscape of Eastern Europe. 

Having completed his  BFA, MFA, and DA studies at the renowned University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, his artistic language skillfully merges the boundaries between oil painting, photography, and digital image rendering. He begins by digitally constructing or altering his compositions, often employing photography and computer-generated imagery as the foundation for his scenes. These digitally created or manipulated visuals serve as blueprints, which he then translates onto canvas using oil paints.

At the beginning of his artistic career, oscillating between abstractionism and figuration, Rusu started exploring the surface and materiality as a medium in itself, entering into direct and mechanical competition with photography through painting. He was intrigued by how image is perceived in a world overflowing with images, advertisements and social media. 

Examining the distinct set of structural characteristics and informational vectors in each platform, the Romanian artist developed his artistic practice to comment on the role of representational painting by using new artistic realities.  His visual grammar is shaped by the collision of modernist ambition and Soviet-era architecture, the rise of consumerism following the collapse of Communism, the mundanity of Black Sea holidays, and the psychological weight of political transition.

By manipulating and mixing mediums, Rusu investigates how he could best record reality while simultaneously questioning the presumption that such a record is objective.  The result of this investigation is an eerily familiar yet dissonant reality —a visual echo chamber where dream and reality coexist.

In Rusu’s striking new series, he expands his aptitude for blurring the distinction between the synthetic and the real by primarily depicting California, unveiling a new body of paintings that transport viewers to sun-soaked Los Angeles, where both global fantasy and personal fiction converge. Rusu presents Los Angeles as a simulacrum: a city he has never visited yet knows intimately through the luminous filters of cinema, video games, and mass media.