Sacru și sacralitate în artele vizuale obiectuale contemporane. Studiu în arealul ceramicii, sticlei și instalației, din opera personală
Authors: Florian Andrei 
Published: March 2021

"Sacred and sacredness in contemporary objectual visual arts
Study in the area of ceramics, glass and installation, from personal works

This article is an honest analysis of the personal artistic creation, over more than two decades, as seen by the author and at the same time by the arts teacher; an examination devoid of intermediaries, but also of predominantly presumptive external opinions. The series of arguments on the complexity and on the major advantage of studying the Ceramics, of the involved study of the university curriculum specific to this art, beneficially completed by arguments for the training and operation with the formalization technologies characteristic to glass, stained glass and tiffany techniques; all make a determining argumentation. Studying and operating in glass-ceramics requires a good command of the techniques and materials specific to all the other fields of visual arts. Our major argument is to demonstrate the unrestricted mobility that the ceramist creator has in operating very efficiently his complex creation, by using all these means. The variety of approaches: conceptual, plastic, expressive, dimensional and material, treated in our work, is argued beyond doubt by the series and cycles of works presented in the illustrations.
The consistently sustained exposition of the personal convictions, justified and assumed, on the creator's relationship with the divinity, fully illustrates the personal approach of relating to our own objectual-artistic creation; thus, we unanimously find that all our representation models already exist in the surrounding world and we are only granted the great privilege and the relatively rare capacity to observe them and to try to understand them, in order to be able to use them later in our creation. The exposition continues by highlighting the constant presence of the formal or symbolic elements of sacredness, in each category, series or cycle of objects or by a brief analysis focused on the object. The fact that some elements of the sacred are present in the personal work is not at all due to a premeditation. Their appearance during the elaboration of each work, from our point of view, is due to the inspiration and revelations, of unexplainable origin, that came to influence our path towards completion. Among the elements presented there are well-known themes such as: The Reliquary, The Altar, The Portal, The Wreath, The Cup, The Cross, The Trinity, Man, The All-Seeing Eye, The Seed, The Fountain, The Window, The Book, The forbidden Fruit etc. Each of these works or cycles has a more or less obvious meaning with a sacred or religious content and resonance - beyond that expressed in its title - through the formal, chromatic, textural or the evocative symbolic elements.
The final conclusion is that it is difficult to find in an already created world a subject that does not already bear the hand of its creator; and among the great graces with which we have been endowed by the same Only Creator, we have not been given: Creation - as a total invention, Judgment and Punishment. These three qualities remain the strict prerogative of the Divinity.
Keywords: grace, divine, primordial, sacred, artistic creation, inspiration, symbol, message
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