Acces liber
2025
The exhibition “Cosmic Attractors” by Miron Schmückle is a visual and deeply poetic journey into the elegance of botanical nature and, equally, into the philosophical potential of flowers. For more than two decades, Schmückle has been drawing (painting) flowers with the precision of a miniaturist and the attention of a botanical researcher. While botanical art typically offers a representation of reality, the hyperrealistic flowers in Miron Schmückle’s art retain the coordinates of reality within the construction of possible, imagined, and plausible worlds, constantly in dialogue with the history of art and botanical nature. Miron Schmückle began exploring the Cosmic Attractors series in 2022 for the solo exhibition Flesh For Fantasy, held at the Städel Museum (Frankfurt). The proposal for a metaphysical rethinking of flowers is inspired by the philosophy of the Italian naturalist Emanuelle Coccia. Miron Schmückle constructs complex worlds through the obsessive repetition of floral motifs.
Artist
Miron Schmückle
Miron Schmückle (born in 1966 in Sibiu) grew up in Romania in a German-Romanian family during the Ceaușescu dictatorship. Both of his parents were artists and taught visual arts in schools. In 1988, he fled to Germany via Hungary, and from 1991 to 1996, he studied at the University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel (Muthesius-Kunsthochschule), specializing in ceramics under Professor Johannes Gebhardt and experimental painting under Professor Renate Anger. In 1994, as a guest student at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK), he took performance classes with Marina Abramović. Afterward, he received a teaching position at the Academy of Theatre in Saint Petersburg (Interstudio – Tsarskoye Selo). In 1997, he moved into his first studio in Hamburg. Since 2008, he has lived and worked in Berlin. In 2016, he obtained a PhD with a study on the cabinet miniatures of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600) at the Institute of Art Theory at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel. Miron Schmückle’s works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad and are included in several public and private art collections.
Photo credit: Elliott Kreyenberg
Curatori
Valentina Iancu
Valentina Iancu (b. 1985) is a writer with studies in art history and image theory. Her practice is hybrid, based on research, and divided between editorial, educational, curatorial, and management activities, with a focus on solidarity, activism, and political art. After nearly a decade of work at the National Museum of Art of Romania, where she was responsible for the care of Romanian modern art heritage and curated a series of large-scale exhibitions, Iancu stepped outside the mainstream art scene, dedicating herself primarily to researching feminist and queer practices in contemporary art from Central and Eastern Europe. She frequently publishes texts on art history in various publications, and since 2011, she has written for Revista Arta. To date, she has authored four monographs on contemporary artists, several exhibition catalogs, and the novel “Brauner. The Clairvoyant Painter”, published by Polirom in 2024.
Photo credit: George Roșu
Cristina Simion
Curator and gallerist Cristina Simion has conceived and organized over a hundred solo and group exhibitions (primarily featuring contemporary artists from Eastern Europe, most of them from Romania) in Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin, Paris, Lisbon, Sintra, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Brussels, Chișinău, Bled, Brașov, Sibiu, Cluj, Iași, Timișoara, Suceava, Bayreuth, Smarje, Schmerikon. With a special interest in new figurative art, she has written, edited, and coordinated catalogs and art albums and published numerous articles. Since 2012, she has been based in Nuremberg, Germany, where she runs the Tiny Griffon Gallery. In 2019 and 2021, she co-curated the Brașov International Biennale of Visual Arts. With a PhD in the management of non-standardized industries and over two decades of experience prior to her curatorial career – in management, journalism, and communication – Cristina Simion also completed and graduated in 2018-2019 from the International Curatorial Studies courses organized by the NODE Center for Curatorial Studies in Berlin, and in 2022, the courses in Art Collection Management (also at NODE Center for Curatorial Studies Berlin) and Introduction to Art and Finance at Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York.
She has lectured primarily on topics related to artistic management at Civitella d’Agliano, Horasis Global Meeting, the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara, and Transilvania University of Brașov. In 2022, through Tiny Griffon Gallery, she was a partner in the international project “Artists at Risk,” providing artist residencies for Ukrainian artists.