Gili Mocanu employs mentally-illustrative objects and symbols which he represents in his works, transforming painting in a kind of applied philosophy. In this kind of practice, the canvas bears witness to the workshop process, a process which the viewer has only partial access to. In Gili’s work there’s a certain philosophy which places emphasis on the abyssal, and a specific manner of understanding the world through art. One of his quests seeks to answer the question: to what extent is visual reality apparent, or how much can it become fundamental?
One of the most important artists of Generation 2000, Gili Mocanu graduates from the Bucharest National University of the Arts in 2000 with a Master’s degree, with the show ‘Gili is dead’. A year later he founds, alongside other artists, the Interest Gallery, now the Possible Gallery. He exhibits in museums and galleries in Romania, as well as Germany, Austria, America, Portugal and Estonia, and, in 2004, he receives the Margareta Sterian Award for fine art from the Romanian National Museum of Art. A year from this, he is nominated to the international Henk Prize CEE for Art final in Vienna. In 2007, he founds the experimental music project Somnoroase Păsărele.