(b. 1971, Pitesti)

Adrian Ilfoveanu is a Romanian artist from the post-1989 generations and a Lecturer at the Sculpture Department at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Renowned for his distinctive sculptures, worked in various media – wood, marble, bronze or synthetic resins, in the area of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic essential shapes- Ilfoveanu is also the author of the sculpture for Romania's most important annual film award – Gopo Prize.  He has a significant track-record in group exhibitions held in Romania, Germany, Norway, Denmark and the Emirates. He lives and works in Bucharest, and from2012 has been represented by AnnArt Gallery, where he took part in three group exhibitions and had the Birds solo show in 2012, with works shown simultaneously as urban installations by the Romanian Peasant Museum, the National Geology Museum and the Herăstrău Park - in Arta la Verde programme developed by AnnArt.

Indian philosophy. The synthesis mode from the Upanishads. Poetry that explodes from the description of the beginnings of the universe. Any description of the beginning of the world fascinates me. That’s what explains how Adam and Eve appeared in my sculpture. The first humans, the first beings on Earth. The force of inception. Even if this inception was not only grandiose, but primitive as well. Cycladic sculpture follows. The sculpture of the great myths. Greek sculpture. And I believe, that at the beginning, as a foundation, there’s also primitive Christianity. Alas, there is music. Sculpture is melody of shapes. I hear this music of the shapes.

(Adrian Ilfoveanu)

Adrian Ilfoveanu’s characters – birds, cats, insects, buffalos…they are strange creatures, mysterious beings, diversely incarnated; big, over a man’s stature and small, fitting in the palm of your hand and mid-sized at all degrees, out of rough-gray, out of luscious-smooth wood or with harsh splinters, out of mirroring bronze, crimson-red board, or out of translucid plastic – and, from what the sculptor tells me, even out of voluptuous Plescoi meat (sic!)

(Gabriela Massaci)

Here is a bizarre route, to say the least. Maybe even somehow fantastic, Adrian Ilfoveanu identifies a source of inspiration in Henri Coanda’s inventions. Where from this connection between sculpture and aerodynamics? Few know that Henri Coanda studied sculpture in the beginning. That’s how he got to the shapes that slit the skies. Adrian Ilfoveanu is inspired by the elements of Henri Coanda’s flying saucer, he is inspired in making the body of a bird. And the shape of the reaction airplane offers him important elements of the same bird. Finally, the effect of rising towards the sky is given by the technique of vertical positioning of the wings. But Ilfoveanu’s bird is not a bird. It’s a human, The Human-bird.

(Sorin Rosca Stanescu)  

Adrian Ilfoveanu