Nataša Prosenc Stearns & Bogdan Constantin Exhibition

Slovenian born visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns earned her BA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She moved to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Before moving to the US, she worked for the Slovenian television and its CNN branch. Her films Souvenir, (released by Cinema Epoch), The Trial of Socrates, (collaboration of 23 international filmmakers), Hotel Diary and others explore innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression. Her body of work ranges from single and multi-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films, video objects and print media. She is known for creative use of non-gallery spaces and large multi-channel installations.

Nataša’s work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, in Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, ARCO Fair Madrid, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Kunstlerwerkstatt Munich, Spazio Erasmus Brera Milan, Lancaster Museum of Art, and in festivals such as SXSW, Films de femmes Paris, Melbourne Film Festival, AVIFF Cannes, Brooklyn Film Festival, Pandemonium London, Chicago Independent Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives Berkeley, RedCat at Disney Music Hall Los Angeles and others. She is a recipient of the Durffee and Soros Grants. Most recently she completed a new body of work for an original opera CODE L.

Having worked in Galleries for over 20 years, it is rarely that I am captivated by an artist’s work. Having quality art in a gallery is quite simply just good business. But when Bogdan Constantin walked in to The Open Window Gallery, Dublin 6 with samples of his work, I was instantly mesmerized. His paintings, his graphics, his drawings are awe inspiring. Constantin is unflinchingly unfrilly despite his multi-layered images. If you are looking for pretty, his paintings will not work for you. If you are looking for beauty, then you will not be disappointed even if it means that you sometimes need to dig deep.

He paints defiance of expectations.

Bogdan Constantin is a symbolic painter bordering on the surreal.  But like all great surrealists, he is precise, and his painting is often breath-taking in its accuracy and power.  Take a running white horse in a turn:  the power is off the canvas.  Or the character of a complex man, handsomely captured in a portrait.  Any museum would be lucky to have such a piece; the floor would be worn from the standing and staring.