Tourists or locals will tend, perhaps, to see in this work only a way to „glamourize” the beach. Few will know that it is made by an artist from Constanta, Alex Baciu. And just as few will be able to discover the serious message under the cheerful, seemingly summary shapes and colors. And in no case will they think that they can contemplate, in swimsuits, a work of art, executed by an artist with works that already appear in the collections of some art museums in Romania and abroad.

Associated almost instantaneously with graffiti and street art, which can be more or less legal or of any quality, such murals are far too easily subsumed to the decorative and are perceived rather as an element of seasonal design. In a sense, they might be right: far too rarely are murals of this type preserved, restored, included in a particular heritage, they tend to be contextual solutions, for the time being, subordinated to the surface on which they were made (and its owner).

But the same cannot be said about paintings, sculptures or installations. And Alex Baciu really is an artist.  And we know that we cheated when, talking about his art, we chose to start with the “sensational”: “with the largest mural….”

We could have started with “Mask transplant, incompatibility 0.1%”, a painting which measures “only” 50×40 cm, but which attacks head-on the subject of the mask and the passions awakened by its obligations during the pandemic.

Or with “New Reality”, a round painting with a diameter of 170 cm that offers us, as if through a magnifying glass, the perspective of a world in which surrealism lost its definition by being confused with the new realism.

Or with “Centenary” (35×45 cm) in which a “piggy bank-pig” reminds us that “Animal Farm” was not and is not necessarily (only) fiction. And the list is longer, much longer.

Probably put together, all the paintings ever made by Alex Baciu will not equal the surface of the mural in Constanța. But they certainly encompass many more worlds. And even if, as in the case of the mural, in them we will often find the same geometry and the same rather serene, optimistic chromaticity that does not cover how much it emphasizes the sobriety and the gloomy accent of the message (or the call), however, each work uniquely addresses a different type of problems and solutions.

Alex  Baciu sends us towards history, technology, people, nature and, in essence, towards the often absurd, strange, bizarre relationship between all of these. Or maybe it sends us to ourselves. În such a way that, when you arrive at that beach in Constanța, you will know exactly where you will be able to see his other works.