Mirage City: London

10 September - 8 October 2025
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  • JD Malat Gallery is pleased to present Mirage City, a solo exhibition by Romanian artist Marcel Rusu (b. 1989, Mediaș, Romania), unveiling a striking new body of paintings that take us on a journey to sun-soaked Los Angeles as global fantasy and personal fiction.
  • Marcel Rusu, The Youth of Night, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Marcel Rusu, Midday Mirage, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Marcel Rusu, Sunset in the Blue, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Marcel Rusu, Under the Watching Moon, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Marcel Rusu, Orange County Reverie, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Marcel Rusu, The Youth of Night, 2025

  • MARCEL RUSU

    Marcel Rusu earned his BFA, MFA, and Doctorate at the renowned University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca where he crafted a distinct artistic language that skillfully merges the boundaries between oil painting, photography, and digital image rendering. 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.

     

     

  • Rusu painting, hotel roosevelt in the background
    Marcel Rusu, Glamorous Midnights, 2025, Acrylic and oil on linen, 78 3/4 x 66 1/2 in, 200 x 169 cm
     

    LA as a Simlacrum

    Rusu has never been to Los Angeles himself. Mirage City, then, does not so much as depict Los Angeles so much as perform it. Rusu treats the city as a cinematic construct, a mirage of freedom, fame, and desire exported through visual soft power. In line with his desire to perform heterotopic environments, his compositions frequently involve visual binomials, such as night and day, local and global, man and architecture. In this way, Mirage City reflects on the deeper mechanics of identity in the digital age: how popular culture is consumed, manipulated, and remade, and how, in turn, these pervasive but distant fantasies are internalised. 

  • Cars lined up on a highway, sunset

    Marcel Rusu, Untitled, 2025. Acrylic and oil on linen, 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in, 50 x 70 cm

    Hyper-real Constructions

    Rusu 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. 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.