Gaep presents new paintings by Cătălin Pîslaru at Expo Chicago 2025

Bucharest gallery Gaep will showcase new paintings by Cătălin Pîslaru at Expo Chicago, the international contemporary art fair held each year in Chicago, Illinois.

This is the first presentation of the Chișinău-born, Düsseldorf-based artist in the US. It is also the first time the Bucharest gallery has taken part in the US event, which gathers more than 170 galleries from all over the world at this edition.

Gaep’s booth in the Profile Section of the international art fair will spotlight new works “that examine the tension between opposing forces: nature and architecture, unpredictable behavior and human rationality, unstoppable organic evolution and functionalist, rule-based thinking.”

Typically working in series, Pîslaru creates enigmatic compositions that hover between fiction and reality. While he refrains from fully disclosing his references – because intuition and memory also play a key role in his process –the forms may originate in various vintage or contemporary magazines, books, technical diagrams, and user manuals, the gallery explained. In the case of Clouding, the new series he made specifically for the presentation at Expo Chicago, an additional reference may be images of abandoned buildings that nature has reclaimed.

“While the subject of architecture has always been present in my work, this is the first time that it becomes overt. I’m interested in the ways rigid geometry and absolute order, which architecture employs, represent a distancing of the man-made from the natural,” the artist explains.

Born in 1988 in Chișinău, Cătălin Pîslaru moved to Italy at the age of 18. He graduated with a BA and MA from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome in 2013, and in 2018, he received a second degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After graduation, he moved to Düsseldorf to focus on “an artistic practice that would harmonize the rigor acquired during his school years with his innate sense of humor.” He has had solo exhibitions at Gaep (Bucharest), Nir Altman (Munich), and Schierke Seinecke (Frankfurt). He is the winner of the Tacker Prize (2018, Galerie der Künstler, Munich) and the Vanni #artistroom (2021, Artissima, Turin) and a finalist for the Hans Purrmann Prize awarded by the municipality of Speyer (2021).

Expo Chicago takes place between April 24 and April 27.

(Photo: Cătălin Pîslaru, Clouding #4, 2025, courtesy of the artist and Gaep)