Costel Chițimuș (b. 1997) studied painting at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca and is currently working towards a PhD at the same university. He has participated in several group exhibitions in Cluj-Napoca - at the Art Museum, La Cave, Cosmic House, Centrul de Interes, Tailors' Tower, Urania; in Alba-Iulia – at Hangar F, Municipal Art Gallery; and in Piatra-Neamț – at Era Gallery. He has had two personal exhibitions, at Galeria Urania and Galeria Minerva in Cluj-Napoca, and was selected for the DIPLOMA Show. He is part of the traveling exhibition "Canon and interpretation" that has been staged at the Art Museum, Cluj-Napoca, and also at Teleki Castle, Posmuș and at the Bistrița-Năsăud Museum Complex.
Guarded by ephemeral angels and a forest, the religious structure conveys a sense of desolation and solitude. The painting depicts a mist in the quiet melancholy of the protective but dated past it suggests. There is also a sense of fragility that points to what is built by humans but at the same time to the persistence and enduring strength of what is sacralized, of what points to the “beyond”, even in its absence.
(Alina Todoca)