”Fragments of Poetic Nature is Iulian Bisericaru’s solo exhibition, presenting a new series of charcoal drawings centered on Gold Corporation and its operations surrounding Roșia Montană, Romania. Bisericaru’s practice consistently engages with ecology, architecture, and the transformation of landscapes. In this exhibition, his recent works introduce a more poetic dimension, where gestures of fragility and erosion coexist with the political tensions embedded in a contested terrain. This poetic dimension does not soften the subject matter but rather sharpens its affective resonance, allowing the viewer to encounter the landscape as both a material reality and a space of reflection. ”
Iulian Bisericaru
Curated by Seolhui Lee
04 April – 04 June, 2026
Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest
Working in charcoal – a medium inherently tied to processes of burning, residue, and compression – Bisericaru renders landscapes that appear at once eroded and suspended in time. His drawings evoke the material memory of extraction: the slow violence of excavation, the fragility of ecological systems, and the spectral presence of abandoned or threatened spaces.
Roșia Montană, known since Roman antiquity as Alburnus Maior, has been a site of gold extraction for over two millennia. Its landscape bears the accumulated traces of successive regimes – from ancient underground galleries to industrial-scale mining under state socialism, and, more recently, to the halted ambitions of a large-scale open-pit project led by a Canadian-backed corporation. The proposed use of cyanide leaching, alongside plans to displace communities and transform the surrounding mountains, sparked one of the most significant environmental protest movements in post-socialist Europe.
“By situating Roșia Montană within a broader discourse of extractivism, Bisericaru’s work reflects on the entanglement of natural resources, global capital, and local histories. The exhibition invites viewers to consider how landscapes become sites of projection – of value, memory, and conflict – and how, in their fragmentation, they continue to carry unresolved narratives into the present.”
Working in charcoal – a medium inherently tied to processes of burning, residue, and compression – Bisericaru renders landscapes that appear at once eroded and suspended in time. His drawings evoke the material memory of extraction: the slow violence of excavation, the fragility of ecological systems, and the spectral presence of abandoned or threatened spaces. Rather than depicting the site directly, the works operate through suggestion and absence, where forms dissolve and re-emerge as fragments. In this sense, the drawings resist fixed interpretation, instead inviting a slower, more attentive mode of viewing attuned to what is partially obscured or in the process of disappearing.
