ARCHIVE//Andreea Hriscu: 50 Shades of Black

(Originally posted 2018–03–27, Daniel Rothwell)

6 min readMay 17, 2018

A visual artist and an architect, Andreea Hriscu was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1984. She studied architecture at UAUIM, Bucharest, from where she graduated with an advanced studies degree.
Her abstract art, mainly black and white, originates from the need to address existential anxiety, using art as a self therapy tool.

She opened her first solo exhibition in April 2016 at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Beijing. Her use of ink reminds us of the traditional Chinese paintings, but a closer look reveals a totally new and original technique. Intriguing in their appearance the paintings depict organic compositions that hold hidden messages. The pictures created put the mind in search for images, and each person sees something else in them.
In this way the paintings become personal both for the painter and for the viewer. What for the painter is an expression of existential anxiety, for the viewer becomes a mirror into their own subconscious.

-https://andreeahriscu.wixsite.com/

In anticipation of joining Death Fuck Abba 1989 for one last hurrah at Yue Space, Andrea and I spoke one surprisingly sweltering afternoon, maybe about the things you’re about to read, maybe not.

After an exercise in which participants of a mindfulness-retreat were required to share their “life story” in forty-five minutes, Andreea realized speech was not necessariliy the strongest way to express herself. This spawned ideas of something much larger: a combination of key life events, soundtracked and illustrated live. This wasn’t quite what ended up happening at DDC when Damon recorded that video, but it was…similar.

“I’ve been using art as therapy, and I always had this dark side which I din’t know how to get in touch with. If I don’t get in touch with it it ends up driving me to do fucked up shit. This new approach with the live painting feels as if it’s getting me much deeper into the dark side. It’s a process in which I get in touch with it, I allow it to rise up, and do its thing. Afterwards I feel at peace.”

On March 27th, Yue Space will play host to Andreea / DFA1989’s second collaboration, entitled “I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST”. On enquiring about the potential future of this newly discovered means of communication, Andreea seemed doubtful due to her new home’s lack of the “same taste for darkness”. The conversation naturally turned towards our feelings about Beijing.

“Thailand doesn’t have the same taste for darkness that Beijing has. I don’t think there’s many places outside beijing that have appreciation for this sort of art. Maybe there are, but it will take time to discover. This is one of the biggest problems I have with moving on.”

“In my view, I think beijing has a unique scene. I’ve been in London, maybe not long enough to get into the true underground, but I felt like there might have not been a… real underground there? Because everything was too official. Berlin was also very interesting, but also became the new normal, and people just do weird shit for the sake of doing weird shit. It might not have a message the whole time.”

“Here in Beijing, I think it has a lot to do with the roughness of this place, and also …various other factors… mean that people are expressing themselves in even more subtle ways, and finding new ways to express themselves, which includes a lot of this darkness. I haven’t encountered this particular… climate of self-expression up until now.”

“I feel that Beijing is very experimental. It’s not like I’m dismissing traditional art, but I especially love this push for ‘new’: Exploring places that haven’t been explored, in very personal and authentic ways.”

“I also feel like if I were in another place, as I have been, it’s not so easy to take the courage to put yourself out there, because everything tends to be so official, and you always start questioning whether what you’re doing is actually going to be appreciated or not. Here in Beijing, you get people saying “Yeah, let’s just put it out there.” The venue owners are much more open minded, they’re willing to see what else is available. I grew a lot into my art direction just by being surrounded by everything else going on in this place.”

There’s a joke about the musicians in the Beijing scene that’s not really a joke, but more a hyperbolized statement that summarizes the bags under our eyes and the booze on our breath: “Once you’re in one band, you’re in five”.

Okay, five is an exaggeration for some, but the sentiment stands. If you want to start a brutally fun hardcore band about fashion, you’ll end up touring Morroco, Spain, and South America. If you want to start a 90s Euro-core from Dusseldorf, you can, and you’ll pack out venues from your first gig. If you want to dress up in robes and pretend you’re from Lichtenstein, you’ll get a piece in The Beijinger, and have someone join you to roll around in paint during your set.

“I have pretty much the same attitude — if you want to try something, try it. If you have something in mind, just go for it. Take comfort in the fact that everybody is doing it. I’ve met a lot of people in the music scene, and it’s really not got that same arrogance that other scenes may have, or that people might assume. Everyone is their own person, but everyone is open. You don’t NEED to be ‘incredibly special’ to do something here, you can just be yourself, and once you allow yourself to come out, then you can…come out.”

“If one doesn’t risk a little bit of failure, then it doesn’t really make sense. Whatever comes from within has value only when one starts worrying about it, when there’s some risk involved. Beijing allows people to do this without fucking up their reputation. It’s a growing experience, there can be good gigs, bad gigs, you can play the wrong chord but shit happens.”

“It’s all about how one takes the experience for oneself. Every experience can be a learning experience, and if we don’t get out of our comfort zone, we’ll never get anywhere.”