Trigonopoetry

These works are part of a larger series of paintings called "Trigonopoetry". Each work starts with leaves from old trigonometry textbooks that are glued to wood panels; certain words are masked out to form a new sentence and the rest is painted over in gouache, acrylic and ink. To me, it is fascinating how, through this process, these texts of scientific certainty can become short text fragments that are in turn poetic, profound, silly, confusing, contradictory, or just funny, but never faithful to the authoritative voice of the original text.

This series currently contains about 40 paintings; eventually, when all the leaves from the original book are painted, the series will reach about 80 to 100 works. The plan is to publish a new book with all these paintings, thus turning an old trigonometry manual into a new, entirely different book.

Tiberiu Chelcea's drawings and prints have been exhibited in juried group and solo shows at galleries in the United States, Mexico and Brazil, including the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, McDonough Museum of Art, Watkins College of Art, Design and Film, Lexington Art League, SUNY College at Brockport, and High Point University. Mr. Chelcea was born in Romania and came to United States to pursue a PhD in Computer Science. He has received several awards, fellowships and patents in the field of electronic and digital design, which continues to be a major source of inspiration for his art.

tibichelcea.net