ARHE' Print

I was born in 1977, in Romania. I studied at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. In the art I practice, I combine my training as painter with photographer and paninter artist. The technique used for processing images is unique. I use the analog device, manually developing the photographies on canvas, wood and recycled paper. My work technique has been defined in time, starting with the experimentation of photography and painting. Trained as painter, but with a curiosity towards photography and the classic darkroom photography, I wished to combine in my art the two techniques in order to bring the photography in the area of the unique. Therefore the technical process is based on liquid photoemulsion and different technical additions from the typography area, practically a mix between black and white photography development, darkroom manipulation and painting. Each photography developed this way on handmade paper, canvas or wood has visual particularities unrepeatable, therefore becoming unique. _____________________________ Justinian Scarlatescu is a unique artist who masterfully combines his multiple trainings as a painter, as a photographer and as an illustrator to become a true photographer-wizard. His image processing techniques are quite original. The artist uses an analog camera. Then he develops manually most of his photographs, using cloth, wood and handmade paper as supports for the image. He plays with the aesthetic qualities of photogelatine and intervenes and manipulates the photographs until they reach a unique effect. Each work is a gem executed with sincere devotion and there is no identical copy. Scarlatescu aims to overcome the lack of uniqueness of objects multipliable to infinity like photographs by producing his experimental monoprints. He also subtly criticizes the values of consumer culture that promote the ephemeral and the infinitely replicable. Thus, he manages to create photographs that abdicate the principle of perfect concordance between the real and its representation. He welcomes randomness and elements that might be interpreted as technical errors. Nostalgic in the most beautiful sense, unique and magical, the world Justinian Scarlatescu creates is filled with a peculiar intimacy and a confessed spiritual feeling.