Exhibition
Departures,
The black ink works

SEA Foundation teams up with Roadburn Festival to announce the 2014 solo-exhibition ‘DEPARTURES, The black ink works of Costin Chioreanu’. An exclusive Costin Chioreanu exhibition with his unique early hand drawn illustrations and original artworks in inkt on paper. Chioreanu is known today as one of the most talented designers of the avant-metal and dark psychedelia. The young Romanian is world famous in this niche. Poster art, visuals and backdrop logo projections have always been an integral part of the Roadburn Festival. All of the artwork is part of the festival’s signature aesthetic and type setting for the niche of metal-, dark psychedelic- and stoner music scene. Stylish approach with big implications, influencing the imaging and graphic design outside this music scene.

A new tradition was born in 2011 when Roadburn Festival and SEA Foundation (Project Space Tilburg at Gust van Dijk) joined forces to exhibit Ester Segarra’s music photography. In 2012, the art space hosted Voivod drummer and festival co-curator Michel Langevin’s “Worlds Away” exhibition. In 2013, Baroness’s John Dyer Baizley made his European debut as a visual artist at our request.

For 2014, Costin Chioreanu, who has returned for the second year in a row to create the official artwork for the Roadburn Festival, has been invited to share a selection of his black ink art from various moments in his career so far.

Costin Chioreanu has been creating album artwork for over a decade. He started out illustrating his band’s demos, but would soon be influenced by circumstances in post-Communist Romania, too. In the mid-1990s, metal fans in Bucharest were lucky to find bootleg cassettes with badly photocopied covers. Undeterred, Costin simply made his own using Heavy Metal Magazine, the country’s sole heavy music publication, as a reference.

Today, he has emerged as one of the most talented artists in the realm of avant-metal and dark psychedelica, producing work for the likes of Darkthrone, Ulver, Triptykon, At The Gates, Neurosis and Opeth among others. Whether the images he conjures are disturbing, provocative or enchanting, they consistently show great finesse, sensitivity and depth.

“All my past projects denote the steps of my spiritual becoming. At one point I learned that I came into this life having a small luggage from beyond and since then I follow my path. I know this may sound curious, but that luggage is like a compass that guides me to “here” and “there”, regarding all forms of art that I experience. This compass leads me through psychology, philosophy, theology, or ancient art study in order to discover that “something”. I have to mention that during my time at the Art Academy I studied only the visual arts, but regarding the rest of my knowledge, this “compass” guides me to pick all that I have ever needed in my quest. My goal is to illustrate the unseen, not the “looks” but the way I feel it. The unseen for me can be a feeling, a force, or it can be related to thoughts and the way they are working and interacting. From my point of view the unseen is everything that makes this world vibrate. The unseen is life and the vibration is music.”

Text by Robert Proost
Translation Heleen Klomp

Publication

At the occasion of the opening of the exhibition DEPARTURES a small catalogue and textbook (edition 60, signed and numbered). Designed by Jinhee Kwon. Both have been digital published on ISSUU. For a closer look check our publication page.

This exhibition is the forth edition and the result of the close collaboration between the Roadburn Festival and SEA Foundation.

Website Costin Chioreanu
Website Roadburn Festival