“Initially, I wanted to focus on a story centered around ‘demons,’ but then another idea came to me. It was right under my nose, in my own library: the tarot cards designed in the ’80s by the magnificent Dalí,” says Alexa.

The story behind this remarkable artistic act is worth knowing. It all began with a proposal from Hollywood for the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, where the producers needed a spectacular deck of cards for the character Solitaire. Dalí accepted immediately, but his enormous ego and exorbitant financial demands led the producers to abandon him in favor of another artist.

Liviu Alexa realized that there exists in Romania — more precisely in Transylvania, Dracula’s famous “headquarters” — a celebrated card game called Filcǎi, the commuters’ game, the game played at funerals or at the neighborhood pub, one that enjoyed incredible fame during communism.

“It is still played in many families today, but somehow this more… plebeian card game never crossed the borders of Transylvania — it is completely unknown in the rest of Romania. It is a very fast-paced game, demanding sharpness, teamwork, and luck — a subcultural artifact, because its origins are remarkably interesting and, like any subculture, through the imagery designed for the playing cards back in the days of the Habsburg Empire, it served as a form of resistance against Austro-Hungarian rule.

My obsession is this: that this game — Filcǎi — should not disappear from social memory. So I decided to dedicate my work and inspiration to it and redraw the entire deck of 20 cards as paintings, imagining new characters for them — a mix of stories featuring decrepit heroes, forgotten gods, modern kings, and even mythological figures from fairy tales that even you have forgotten, let alone our children who no longer read anything. It is my modest sign of respect for the modest roots that I have, and that many of you have too,” says the artist.

More about: www.alexa.space

Curator: Lucian Nastasă- Kovacs