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Olesea Albu – contemporary artist

To create is to embrace questions

with no answers.

About

Between Heart and Mind

Every time I touch the palette, I return to myself — to the one who might have vanished had I not once opened my heart to art. My work is a journey of falls, ascents, and healing, where paint becomes alchemy, transforming personal experience into universal emotion.

My name is Olesea. I am an artist from Moldova, working at the intersection of figurative painting and abstraction. The landscapes of the southeast, where I grew up, are not my subject but an impulse: their contrasts of light, textures, and sharp lines form the foundation of my visual language, bridging the rigor of academic tradition with rebellion against literalism.

After graduating in scenography from the Academy of Music, Theatre, and Fine Arts (Chisinau), I learned to craft narratives — now they live in my paintings, turning canvases into spaces for dialogue between the viewer and the idea. My shift from realism to abstraction was not a break but a liberation. By dismantling form, I sought to express what lies beyond the visible: the tension between human fragility and resilience, inner conflicts, and strength.

Thick impasto techniques, glazes, bold palette knife strokes, and delicate brushwork — these layers capture life’s contradictions. Blurred backgrounds dissolve to illuminate what matters: the interplay of light and shadow, the gesture of an archetypal figure, the choreography of symbols in an ephemeral void. By stripping away the superfluous, I leave room for the viewer’s question: what remains when form disappears?

Each of my works is a stage where texture becomes metaphor. Inspired by the harmony of antiquity, Warhol’s pop art, Marina Abramović raw vulnerability, and the quiet dramaturgy of theatrical space, I hybridize symbols to provoke a confrontation with the self.

My works are held in private collections across Europe, the UK, and the US, and have been exhibited in galleries that value the dialogue between tradition and avant-garde. But what matters most to me is to create a space where the viewer, like my past self, permits oscillation — between heart and mind, control and surrender, the earthly and the boundless.

Personal Exhibitions
 
2019    Exhibition of Graphics "Between Black and White", Art Gallery / Tiraspol
2018    Solo Exhibition of paintings and graphics "Between Black and White", Palace of Culture / Romania Braila, Ianca
 

Group Exhibitions 
 
2025 

            Exhibition "Spring salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            International Prize “Artist of The Year 2025”, Pucci Palace / Italy, Florence 


2024

            Exhibition "Winter salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati           
            
Exhibition - contest of contemporary fine art  "We: Creative Youth ", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi"

            Moldova, Chisinau (Nominated)

            Exhibition "Spring salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Exhibition "Summer salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Exhibition "Autumn salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
           
2023  

            International exhibition - Video Expo "The power of Art", Art Gallery Tolomeo / Italy, Milano
            Exhibition "Autumn salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Exhibition "Summer salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Exhibition "Spring salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Contemporary Art Exhibition "Spring Salon", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi"/MD  Chisinau   


2022    

            Exhibition "Winter salon", Art Gallery "Nicolae Mantu" / Romania, Galati
            Contemporary Art Exhibition "Spring Salon", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi"/MD, Chisinau


2021  

            Exhibition "Pocrov Vernissage", Art Gallery / Tiraspol
            Contemporary Art Exhibition "Spring Salon", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi"/MD, Chisinau


2020    

            Contemporary Art Exhibition "Spring Salon", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi"/MD, Chisinau
            Exhibition - contest of contemporary fine art  "We: Creative Youth", National Art Gallery 
            «Constantin Brancusi» / Moldova, Chisinau


2019 - 2014  

            Exhibition - contest "Automnala", National Art Gallery "Constantin Brancusi" / Moldova, Chisinau
            Exhibition - contest of contemporary fine art  "We: Creative Youth", National Art Gallery 
            "Constantin Brancusi" / Moldova, Chisinau

            Exhibition-contest of contemporary fine art  "We: Creative Youth ", National Art Gallery 
            "Constantin Brancusi" / Moldova, Chisinau

            Exhibition of graphics and painting, Art Gallery / Bender
            Scenography Exhibition "Carnival M. Lermontov", Theater of an actor / Moldova, Chisinau
            Exhibition - contest "150 anniversary of Kitkani Monastery" (Grand prize) | Art Gallery / Tiraspol 
            Scenography Exhibition, Republican puppet Theater "Likurich" / Moldova, Chisinau
​​

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