Șerban Savu (b. 1978) lives and works in Cluj, Romania. Interested in the multiple meanings of the visible reality, he paints the image of the world around him reflected through the filter of art history. Characterized by empathy and a keen sense of observation, by means of synthesis and re-composition, his paintings are an invitation to reassess the present in a wider historical context. Savu’s paintings draw from the neutral observation of the surrounding realityseen through the lens of the past. Yet the artist is not only interested in the recent past but also in society in its entirety, in its history and mechanisms.

The study in watercolour for the painting 'Antechamber' is a defining theme of Șerban Savu's oeuvre: rest, as the basic "activity" of contemporary man, alongside work. Thus, the final version of this composition is included in What Work Is, the artist's exhibition in the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The viewer can ask several questions: who is the person we can see? Where is he? What is he doing? The title defines not so much any precise location but rather the state, that of waiting. Thus, the character we see could be a man exhausted from working, or a beggar, or even Saint Francis, if we take account of the allusion, made through the sparrows, to the holy beggar who talked to the birds.

(Székely Sebestyén György)