Valentin Scărlătescu had a blazing career within the Romanian ’80s generation, marked by several memorable exhibitions. Then, he left that path, emigrating to Paris in the middle of the decade.

This French trajectory separated the artist from the vibrant energy of young local art to such an extent that, while preparing a curatorial reconstruction of the period, I found myself wondering whether the memory of those solo shows, both intense and vague, wasn’t simply a glitch of recollection.

I even questioned whether the artist then known as Ion Valentin Scărlătescu wasn’t in fact a composite figure, pieced together from stylistic and thematic flashbacks typical of the group of artists assimilated to the international Neo-Expressionist movement.

(Text by Călin Dan)