Răzvan Botiș

Răzvan Botiș (b. 1984, Brașov, Romania; lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania) is a versatile artist whose practice spans conceptual painting, sculpture, ready-mades, and institutional critique. Rooted in ceramics as his primary medium, Botiș explores themes of identity, cultural affiliation, and the complex relationship between art and society. His stylistic approach is notably diverse, ranging from Poverist sensibilities to exuberant, ecstatic expressions.

Although he has previously approached the medium of ceramics as a sculptural object, especially in the most recent exhibitions, the artist now completely abandons the convention of what is traditionally recognized as an art object, transgressing into the functional – the small bowls come from their most distant memory, the Neolithic – or in amorphous sculptures, like a pile of mud that pottery can turn into if fired at less than 573°C. [...] Perhaps this denial of a conventional pre-established format [of what a work of art should look like] is, paradoxically, one of the most conceptual approaches proposed by Răzvan Botiș now, when all other artists produce hyper-polished, hybrid-interdisciplinary new-media objects, amassed under that umbrella of inaccessibility which defines the aesthetics of the new global conceptualism. [excerpt from Horațiu Lipot’s exhibition text for Văsuț, 2024]

Botiș' work has been shown in various solo and collective exhibitions, among which L’art de rien, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels (2023); Persona, Mucem, Marseille (2019); Life a User's Manual II: I work, therefore I'm not, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2017); Few Were Happy with Their Condition, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (2016); Cluj Connection 3D, Galerie Judin, Berlin (2015); Appearance & Essence, Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (2015); HOT SPOT CLUJ – NEW ROMANIAN ART, Arken Museum, Copenhagen (2013); November Remember September, Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral, Bad Ems (2012); Eight and a half new works, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest (2011); Trying to purchase what I once wanted to forget, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna (2011, solo); The Idiot, Centre for Visual Introspection, Bucharest (2010, solo); The Hill was a Mountain, Andreiana Mihail gallery, Bucharest (2009, solo).