Ph. D. Sergiu CHIHAIA (b. 1982, Verejeni, Republic of Moldova) is a visual artist specializing in fashion. He graduated from the National University of Arts Bucharest and is currently a full-time faculty member in the Fashion Department at the same institution. He lives and works in Bucharest. His works have been featured in national and international exhibitions (Bucharest, Constanța, London, and Venice). He has works in private collections in England, Italy, and Romania.

In 2014, he won the UAP Award for Decorative Arts – Textiles in the fifth edition of the “Arte in Bucharest” project. He is a sculptor, textile artist, and designer, and in the heat of creation, he combines all these elements, becoming a scenographer. Thus, the artist reconstructs the history of the world as a stage, a display space for human dramas, joys, and triumphs.
(source: https://ateliere.net/ro/sergiu-chihaia)

Ecological art is evolving rapidly from an art movement into a pervasive current that should engage an increasing number of people. The necessity of such representations is of utmost importance today, as we face the brink of cataclysmic climate change.

This artistic niche began around the 1970s, initially seen as environmental art, and has since developed into various branches. Ecological art focuses more on engaging people in ecological practices, raising awareness, and inspiring social action to achieve an activist movement. Suzi Gablik, a pioneer in this area, referred to ecological art as “connective aesthetics,” highlighting the importance of moving beyond anthropocentrism towards a relational system where the connections between culture, nature, art, and science prevail.

The purpose of this approach is to create art that is not merely for display but to foster a participatory experience where the audience is invited to engage and understand the implications of their actions. This postmodern approach shifts the discussion from a “deconstructive” to a “reconstructive” one, as Gablik discussed, moving towards a future that might avoid complete disaster due to our reckless way of living.

However, one crucial aspect in the grand scheme of ecological art is that it can never be entirely separated from its source medium. Its entirety becomes a powerful referential material that not only intersects all involved parties but also constitutes the very intersection itself. This means that ecological art is not a finite, final artistic object but a continuously transcendent one that immerses us in the problems of modernity.

A Poetic Examination of Environmental Vulnerability

Sergiu Chihaia presents the exhibition “Echilibru Foarte Fragil” (EN: Highly Fragile Equilibrium) at Complexul Muzeal Bistrița-Năsăud, centred on the concept of the delicate balance of our world and the urgent need to understand and act upon the fragile equilibrium between life and death. Curated by Ph.D. Ana Negoiță, the exhibition exclusively features plant materials such as tree branches and remains, meticulously processed and integrated into kinetic installations. This approach metaphorically underscores the fragility of our current ecosystem.

Visually compelling due to the skeletal appearance and the muted palette of the processed wood, Sergiu Chihaia invites viewers into a reflective space, offering a poetic warning about the future through complex shapes, volumes, and textures. The artworks, often precariously balanced, group together in intricate nodes or guide the viewer’s gaze along graceful lines formed by elongated branches. These installations stimulate the imagination, prompting viewers to recognize various shapes and contemplate the implications of our actions.

The skeletal forms and pale hues symbolize messages from a possible near future where nature is defeated, representing a death that signifies the ultimate demise of life. These remnants serve as evidence of humanity’s threat to the ecosystem and a cautionary glimpse of what could happen if we do not change our ways. Being part of the ecosystem should instill pride and responsibility, emphasizing the need for conscious interaction with all its elements to ensure the system’s survival. 

Sacred Aesthetics and Environmental Vulnerability

Extrapolating these elements of wood and cloth, we can draw a comparison to the biblical scene of the descent from the cross. In both scenarios, the kinetic forces and leverage systems are analogous, with branches representing limbs and the cloth symbolising Christ’s shroud. This parallel endows the installations with a sacred aura, akin to the impact of religious art. While picturesque art transports viewers to the allegorical realm of The Crucifixion, Chihaia’s installations offer a sub-limating, even subliminal, effect, creating a sacred atmosphere without explicit explanation. We are witnessing a fragile equilibrium, an aesthetic entropy instinctually telling us in both cases that there are consequences coming.

Another advancement in the schematic transference of movement was theorized by Kandinsky in his “Dance of the Future.” Through his analysis of Gret Palucca’s dance, he formulated a thesis on how the tension of bodily expression can be translated into more geometric representations. Kandinsky argued that the dynamic tension inherent in dance movements could be abstracted into geometric forms, thereby bridging the gap between physical performance and visual art.

He believed that the essence of movement, captured through the dancer’s gestures and postures, could be distilled into a series of lines, shapes, and colors, each representing different aspects of motion and emotion. This theoretical framework not only advanced the understanding of abstraction in visual art but also highlighted the interconnectedness of different art forms. By reducing the complexity of human movement to its geometric essence, Kandinsky opened up new possibilities for representing dynamism and expressiveness in static visual media. This approach underscores the potential of abstract art to convey deeper layers of meaning and emotion, transcending the limitations of traditional figurative representations.

Eco-Art Dialogues: Sergiu Chihaia, Henrique Oliveira and Laura Bacon

Looking back at the international stage, we can place Sergiu Chihaia’s installation among big names in the ecoart area such as Henrique Oliveira or Laura Ellen Bacon. While Chihaia and Oliveira prefer an either ghostly-driven, subtle or powerful, violent display, Laura Bacon focuses on the possible symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.

Henrique Oliveira’s Gordian Knots

“Creating a spectacular and invasive Gordian Knot, Henrique Oliveira plays with Palais de Tokyo’s architecture, allowing a work that combines the vegetal and the organic to emerge. The building itself becomes the womb that produces this volume of “tapumes” wood, a material used in Brazilian towns to construct the wooden palisades that surround construction sites.

Through a kind of architectural anthropomorphism, Henrique Oliveira reveals the building’s structure. At Palais de Tokyo, he plays on the space’s existing and structuring features, prolonging and multiplying pillars in order to endow them with a vegetable and organic dimension, as though the building were coming alive. The artist draws inspiration from medical textbooks, amongst others, and particularly from studies of physical pathologies such as tumours.

Through a formal analogy, these outgrowths evoke the outermost layers of the bark of a common tree. The texture of this wooden tapumes installation inevitably calls to mind certain tree essences from Amazonian, humid tropical forests: the rivulets and other nodes constitute uncontrollable networks, in a logic that Man can no longer suppress.“
source: https://palaisdetokyo.com/en/exposition/henrique-oliveira/

Laura Bacon’s Symbiotic Forms

At the same time, Laura Bacon says:

“I use natural materials, en masse. I hope my language of form may feel strangely familiar to the natural world. It is my goal that my work might bring some intrigue into both natural and built environments, creating work that might serve to remind us that nature can still surprise us.

My work is also focussed on the human, physical experience within woven spaces or ‘burrows’ – although I joyously admit that the immersive process and the almost primitive nesting instinct it releases means that the main recipient of the experience is me.” Nonetheless, Sergiu Chihaia completes the two artist-thesis with his clear conclusion, deduced from the reckless actions of men: we are living in a Highly Fragile Equilibrium.
source: https://www.lauraellenbacon.com/about/biography/

Nonetheless, Sergiu Chihaia completes the two artist-thesis with his clear conclusion, deduced from the reckless actions of men: we are living in a Highly Fragile Equilibrium.