Dominic-Petru Virtosu

Virtosu’s paintings invite viewers to inhabit the weird tension between familiarity and strangeness.

Being an adept of crude metaphors and not afraid to be emphatic about it, Dominic Virtosu is exploring the actuality and in-actuality of painting. With his solid work experience in the field of advertising, he is playing with its lively chaos of imagery and creates a sort of “peinture d’essai”. The artists’ desire to shock, to provoke, to hurt the retina, comes from his interior fracture: between revolt towards consumerist advertising and his simultaneous attraction towards its inexhaustible, toxic imaginarium. This is a painting style that is not “nice” nor is it “tame”.

The artists’ meeting with Neo Rauch’s art and the neorealist movement at the Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig under the tutelage of professor Annette Schröter has had a profound influence on his narrative style aș well aș on his technique. A Masters’ graduate at the Național University of Arts in Bucharest in the painting class of Professor Cătălin Bălescu, the artist has developped his own visual language made up of contemporary references, clues that he degrades in ironic and visual distopias („Memory Empty” - 2011, „See You Later” - 2019, “The G...

2017 – 2018 French Government Scholarship / Campus France at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque/Tourcoing

2017 – 2018 POST-MASTER in art-teaching / CE2A – Ecole Supérieure d’Art de Dunkerque/Tourcoing

2011 – 2012 Erasmus Scholarship at the Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. Painting class of Prof. Annette Schröter

2010 – 2013 MASTER Diploma in Painting – National University of Arts, Bucharest. Painting class of Prof. Cătălin Bălescu

2002 – 2006 BACHELOR Diploma in Painting – National University of Arts, Bucharest. Painting class of Prof. Florin Ciubotaru

1998 – 2002 BACCALAUREAT Diploma – German “Goethe” High-school of Bucharest

2024
- O’Bazaar Fair, Lille, France (group show)
- Le Chant du Monde, Chateau de Bourgogne, Estaimpuis, Belgium (group show)

2023
- Solo Show at KI Gallery, Paris, France
- Renouveau, Chateau Bac-Saint-Maur, Sailly sur la Lys, France (group show)

2022
- Solo Show, Impulse Gallery, Lucerne, Switzerland – Curated by Zhuang Hong-Yi
- Coexistence, Istanbul Atatürk Cultural Centre, Istanbul, Turkey curator Beste Gürsu (group show)
- AAF Brussels, ArtLef Gallery/Groeningen, Brussels, Belgium – curator Paul LaPoutre (group show)

2021
- Hauts les Coeurs, Art Center of Verderonne, Verderonne, France – curator Caroline Corre
- Retrouvailles, Collégiale Gallery, Lille, France – curator Veronique Dalle

2020
- New Image Come Back, Galerie 36Bis, Tourcoing, France – curator Eric Harasym

2019
- Sea of Flowers, Dock Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands – curator Zhuang Hong-Yi

2018
- Point d‘Eau, Nasbinals, Lozère, France – curator Dominic Vîrtosu

- Avez-vous un motif ? , Frontieres Art Gallery, Lille, France - curator Janusz Stega

2017
- Going Strong, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

2016
- Proiectul Arta la Fereastra, Galeria Simeza, Bucuresti, Romania – curatoare: Anca Boeriu si Corina Gabriela Duma
- PAIN / TI...