Maria Balea (b. Sighetu Marmatiei, 1990; lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania) and George Crîngasu (b. Focsani, 1988; lives and works in Cluj-Napoca and Rome) are among the youngest members of the School of Cluj, which has attained international renown in Adrian Ghenie, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, and Ciprian Muresan. The overarching theme in their works in a range of media is the lived reality of today’s young people between a physical world defined by uncertainties and a virtual parallel universe whose boundless possibilities make it a fascinating yet also often deceptive safe haven.B

oth artists roam this dizzying kaleidoscope of worlds on a quest for beauty: Balea, through a romantically idealized focus on remnants of untouched or deserted nature; Crîngasu, by abandoning himself to the graphical possibilities of the digital realm, where beauty is often bound up with the bending of natural laws and the physical impossibility of architecture. Yet both, the retreat to an ostensibly natural state and the escape into garish artificiality, are overshadowed by a nameless menace.