Ana Maria Micu

The Persistence of looking

Curator: Adrian Bojenoiu
Location: Scânteia +
October 10 - November 2, 2025 
Thursday - Sunday / 1:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Ana Maria Micu develops a painterly practice oriented toward exploring how lived reality transforms into image. The central focus of her research is the relationship between domestic space and inner transformations — the way dwelling, with its repetitions and variations, influences her working processes and artistic perception.

Since settling in Botoșani in 2015, Micu has shaped her living and working environment into a unified space. The studio, dwelling, and the indoor balcony garden function as interdependent elements of a carefully managed system in which daily observation and the rhythm of work form parts of the same structure. This organization has led to a methodical practice grounded in attentive observation of how plants respond to light, temperature, or human presence, as well as a continuous analysis of the relation between her own presence and the surrounding environment.

Her working process often begins with photographic documentation of fragments of her apartment’s interior. These images are later reconstructed in painting, subtly altered in terms of luminosity, color palette, or compositional tensions. The final representation is not an attempt to reproduce the real, but a reformulation of it — one in which memory, perception, and interpretation combine to create a new form of visual presence.

In her works the domestic space operates as a visual ecosystem in which objects, plants, and light condition each other. Repositioning a potted plant, the appearance of a new leaf, or a change in light direction alters the balance of the entire scene. This logic of interdependence is akin to Lynn Margulis’s theory of symbiogenesis: a transformation in one element produces readjustments in the whole. Her idea of “the long-lasting intimacy of strangers” may be read here on a domestic scale as prolonged co-existence among the human, the vegetal, and objects, in which relationships stabilize over time and give rise to new configurations. Painting records these micro-changes and transforms them into compositional structure.

Representation is not the ultimate goal, but a tool by which the gaze is decelerated. The artist uses fine adjustments of light, chromatic temperature, and detail rhythm to extend the time of perception. Her works invite lingering: layers become visible one after another, and elements that appear minor — such as the edge of a pot, a cold shadow, a barely bent stem — acquire importance. In this way painting functions as a device of immersion, encouraging an attentive relationship comparable to prolonged observation in a field study.

This approach positions Micu’s practice within an international tradition of slow observation and meticulous representation, where seemingly narrow subjects prove fertile over the long term. In the local context, her method enters into dialogue with the interest in nature and process found in the work of Constantin Flondor; internationally, it resonates with the attentiveness to detail and slow time evident in artists such as Vija Celmins or Lois Dodd.

In the exhibition, the video work “Pretty Removal ” (6 October 2024, Hsinchu, Taiwan; public space intervention; video with stereo sound, 1920 × 1080 px, 33’21’’) extends this ethic of attention from the interior apartment toward the external environment. Its point of departure is the aftermath of a typhoon: a potted

Zamioculcas plant placed in a public space is overturned, and the plant becomes captive within a cluster of red ornaments wired together, forced into a compact bouquet. The artist’s intervention consists in removing these decorations, perceived as long-term disturbance to the plant’s body. The gesture is not spectacular, but it is consistent: time devoted to the carefully organized dismantling of imposed “beauty,” in order to restore the plant’s functionality and natural growth. The video records this discreet labor of readjustment, in which observation becomes action, and care becomes a compositional criterion.

"Pretty Removal" clarifies the stake of the exhibition title Persistence of Looking: persistence does not just mean looking for a long time, but also intervening responsibly when the gaze reveals tensions between appearance and function. Painting and video meet in an ethic of attention and domestic or public cohabitation in which repetition produces difference, and prolonged observation opens up meaning.

Consequently, Ana Maria Micu’s practice is articulated as a framework of visual research in which apparently limited subjects reveal, over time, their complexity and inexhaustible potential. The consistency and rigor of her process support a form of attention rarely encountered, one that transforms the pictorial space from mere representation into a place of mental and affective dwelling; here, prolonged looking produces difference, and the image becomes a territory of co-existence among memory, perception, and interpretation.

Co-financed by AFCN
Partners: Revista Arta, Ecopolis, ICMA