INFERNO

VICTOR MAN: THE ABSENCE THAT WE ARE – David Zwirner | London – 18 September – 31 October 2025

Les peintures psychologiquement superposées et résolument énigmatiques de Victor Man effondrent la réalité et la fiction, le passé et le présent. Marqué par une élégante sobriété et souvent peint dans une palette de tons sombres et atmosphériques, le travail de l’artiste englobe des portraits d’individus de son milieu, ainsi que des scènes chargées de symboles, enveloppées dans une mélancolie ombragée et suspendues dans un état psychique transitoire et onirique.

Victor Man est né en 1974 à Cluj, en Roumanie. Son travail a fait l’objet de diverses expositions personnelles dans des musées et institutions tels que le Städel Museum de Francfort (2023) ; Fondation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2022) ; Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2021) ; Musée Tamayo, Mexico (2018) ; Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014) ; Villa Médicis, Rome (2013) ; et Musée Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2009).

L’œuvre de Man est conservée dans des collections institutionnelles internationales, notamment au Centre Pompidou de Paris ; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Musée d’art du comté de Los Angeles ; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM), Luxembourg ; Musée Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam ; Collection Pinault, Paris ; Musée d’art moderne de San Francisco ; Musée Städel, Francfort ; et Tate, Royaume-Uni.

Victor Man vit en Europe.

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Victor Man’s psychologically layered, resolutely enigmatic paintings collapse reality and fiction, past and present. Marked by an elegant spareness and often painted in a palette of dark and atmospheric tones, the artist’s work encompasses portraits of individuals from his milieu, as well as symbolically laden scenes that are cloaked in a shadowed melancholia and suspended in a transitory, dreamlike psychical state.

Victor Man was born in 1974 in Cluj, Romania. His work has been the subject of various solo exhibitions at museums and institutions such as the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2023); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2022); Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2021); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2018); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); Villa Medici, Rome (2013); and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2009).

Work by Man is held in international institutional collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM), Luxembourg; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Pinault Collection, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; and Tate, United Kingdom.

Man lives in Europe.

« Silently the child dwelled in nocturnal cave listening in the blue wave of the spring to the ringing of a radiant flower. And the pale figure of the mother stepped out of the decayed wall and sleepwalking she carried the one born into pain in slumbering hands to the garden. And the stars were drops of blood shimmering in the bleak branches of the old tree and they fell in the nocturnal one’s course cloth of hair, and the boy quietly lifted the purple eyelids, the silver forehead sighing in the night wind.

Wakening in the evening garden in the quiet shadow of the father, o how frightened this radiant head suffering in blue coolness and the silence in autumn rooms. A golden boat the sun sank at the lonely hill and the earnest treetops fall quiet overhead. Silently the slumbering countenance of the sister encounters in moist blueness, buried in her scarlet-colored hair. Blackish the night followed the other one.

What forces to stand so silently on the decayed spiral staircase in the house of the fathers and the flickering candlestick dies in slender hands. Hour of lonely sinisterness, mute awakening in the hallway in the sallow web of the moon. O the smile of evil sad and cold, so that the sleeping woman’s rosy cheek pales. In showers a black linen veiled the window. And a flame jumped out of the other one’s heart and it burned silverly in darkness, a singing star. Silently childhood’s crystalline paths sank in the garden. »*

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR
DARKNESS?
UNSEEING EYES
ALLSEEING EYES THAT
FOLLOW YOU
AROUND THE ROOM
BLUE AND GREEN

NABOKOV’S PALE FIRE
INNER EXILE
NOON ON THE MOON
THE STILLNESS OF THEIR
FACES
AS FORBIDDEN DESIRES
RUN THROUGH THEIR
VEINS
THERE’S A FRONT AND
A BACK
AN UP AND A DOWN
TRY NOT TO MIX THEM UP

—”What Color is Your Darkness?” by Karl Holmqvist, 2025

* “Memory“ (Fragment) [Version 1 of “Metamorphosis of Evil”] —Georg Trakl (1887–1914)

Images copyright Victor Man 2023 / 2024 – David Zwirner Gallery 2025