Represented by JNunez Gallery

b. February 5, 1981. Cluj, Romania

Before moving her home studio to Millburn, NJ in 2020, Calina has spent 20 years in New York City, 2 in Italy, and 17 in her native Romania.

Driven by an innate inquisitive nature, Calina’s work has evolved over the years into the abstract. Where the figurative could not answer, raw materials began to speak for themselves, asking for a life lived by a different set of rules.

In her latest work, the artist pushes the limits of the medium beyond the intended use, as creation is the only way to overcome the mundane and to generate anew. The series embodies her artistic transformation over the years and speaks to her desire of first confronting the undesirable, subsequently revealing its beauty. The usually discarded, dried medium is encased in resin, layer by layer. The result is an aesthetically striking and perfectly still moment of calculated discord. This portal to a new beginning proves that higher than actuality, stands possibility.

Traditionally-trained in the fine arts from a young age, Calina holds a BFA and AA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Artist Statement

The shaping and expression of substance that is otherwise inert is most interesting to me. The paint as a medium, in its fluid, paste or dried form comes alive when we touch and transform it. Without figurative representation, the attention can be focused on the physical aspect, elevating it to its artistic value through intentional or impulse-guided gestures.

My work begins with a dialogue between self and matter, and leads to the abstract, where the corpus is deciphered through the texture, chromatic intensity, and kinesics. The pieces tell intricate stories in a clandestine language for which there is no physical referent.