Alexandru Vlad, poet and writer
Radu Serban uses in his art two coordonates: “reference” and “particularization” or “carving”. … “Reference” towards an iconic art, an art of the traditional Romanian icons with its Byzantine origin, its special script and its well-known aesthetic… His proposition is the “carving”, which is of an amazing modernity. If the “reference” is esoteric, then “carving” is of a modern and personal esoterism. Inside this “carving” lays his proposition for modernity. Here lays a modern understanding of space. If Byzantine art is a passage that leads towards perfection, which, as Sorin Dumitrecu, was already reached by predecessors, this carving is what Radu Serban proposes and leads it on its own way.
It’s a plastic re-reading, a postmodernism, a use of “reference” in a modern way. Things overlap later like in a palimpsest; in some works, colour, the suggestion of summer, of an old wall, of a time-consumed colour; but, generally, I would mention and underline that this carving is the window from which I saw this artist’s modernity.
TV show at TV Cluj, October 1993
Translate by Gaby Brezean