Zoltán Béla graduated from the University of Arts and Design in Cluj after studying ceramics at his local high school in Baia Mare. His paintings often originate from a space of personal memories, images that he modifies, pictorially translates and pairs with other elements to arrive at compositions that are purposefully nurture the past into the present. His work is situated between abstraction and figuration, construction and improvisation, the surface of the canvas, and the translation of space. Incorporating discarded objects and modeled elements in art-object and uncanny installations, Zoltán Béla hybridizes the ready-made with the upcycled objects, establishing a direct rapport between sculpture and painting, deriving from a curiosity about the everyday and a virtuosic grasp of texture and materiality.
Solo Shows
2018 Zoom, Új Kriterion Galéria, Miercurea Ciuc, Romania
2016 Art at the window (guest-artist), Simeza Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2016 L’espace ventriloque, Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2014 Installation, The National Museum of Contemporary Art Anexa, Bucharest, Romania
2012 Traces, Anca Poteraşu Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2011 In meditation: Feeling the Silence, Anca Poteraşu Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2010 A certain time, a certain place, a certain state, Little Yellow Studio, Bucharest, Romania
2009 Self Reflecting 30, Point Contemporary Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2009 Transition Icons, Carini & Donatini Gallery, Italy
2007 Car Wreck, Sadaba, Estonia
Group Shows
2018 AnimaL, Diptych Art Space, Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2018 Galbenul intens și alte pete de culoare rezistente la sens, Bistrița Museum, Romania
2018 Winter Celebration, Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2018 AD-HOC, Új Kriterion Galéria, Miercurea Ciuc, Romania
2017 Colonia Pictorilor, Baia Mare artistic centre, Romania (The Painters’ Colony is over a hundred-years old institution shaping the Baia Mare school of painting, one of the most important XXth century Romanian artistic movements, comprising artists from all over Europe such as Richard Gerst, Leo Kober Károly Ferenczy, Arthur Verona)
2017 Black and White Biennial, Satu Mare, Romania
2017 The Privileged Eye, (with Matei Bejenaru, Róbert Köteles), Vienna Contemporary, International Art Fair, Vienna, Austria (with Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2017 The Map Is Not the Territory, The Romanian Cultural Institute, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 Simpatie și semnificație, curator: Anca Mihuleț, National Romanian Library, Bucharest, Romania
2016 Werkschau Spinnerei Gallery Tour, Leipzig Spinnerei Galleries, Germany
2016 EXTENSION.RO, curators: Dan Popescu, Yana Smurova , Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2016 Vom Allmächtigen zum Leibhaftigen, curator: Tom Beege, Kunsthaus Apolda Avantgarde, Apolda/Thuringia, Germany
2016 Multicultural Art Walk, Romania
2016 The Politics of Green and Ruins, Volta12 Basel, Switzerland (with Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2015 Timisoara Biennial Art Encounters, Timisoara, Romania
2014 BB6, Curator Gergo Horvath, PAVILION center for contemporary art and culture / Combinatul Fondului Plastic / The Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, Romania
2014 Vienna International Art Fair (ViennaFair), Vienna, Austria (With Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2013 The New Contemporary, ViennaFair 2013 (With Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2012 Curators Network, Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, Romania
2012 Contemporary Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey (with Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2011 The New Figurative, Victoria Art Centre, Bucharest, Romania
2011 Coloring the Grey, The 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia
2011 Preview Berlin, Germany
2011 I Am a Romanian: The Bucharest – Tel Aviv Route, Israel
2011 Art Moscow – World Fine Art Fair, Moscow, Russia (with Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2011 Preview Berlin – The Emerging Art Fair, Berlin, Germany (with Anca Poterasu Gallery)
2010 Out Of Sacred, (with Andres Serrano, Shirin Neshat, Kehinde Wiley, Bruno Zanichelli, Ciprian Mureşan), Arezzo, Italy
2010 Police the Police, The 4th Bucharest Biennial of Young Artists, Bucharest, Romania
2010 The Berlin Wall – Promenade Gallery, Vlore, Albania
2010 Global Art Local History #1 – Top 4 Terrorist Attacks with the most victims, preview space Nasui Gallery, Bucharest, Romania