Marina Aristotel

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Marina Aristotel belongs to a generation of contemporary artists whose practice probes the material boundaries between painting and object. Educated at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where she completed both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in painting, she has developed a visual language rooted in experimentation and in the tactile engagement with matter. Her use of resin—a medium that both conceals and reveals—defines much of her production. By embedding pigments, acrylic layers, or fragments of collage within translucent surfaces, she constructs images that function as suspended environments rather than traditional pictorial fields. The process arrests each intervention within a compact temporal structure, creating a subtle dialogue between chance and control. Her work investigates the interplay between transparency and opacity, surface and depth, as a mean of articulating memory and perception. Resin’s capacity to absorb and immobilise other materials allows Aristotel to question the notion of completion in art, presenting each piece as an arrested process. The resulting compositions evoke a material fragility that contrasts with their physical density, inviting the viewer to approach them not as images but as spatial experiences. Since 2015, she has exhibited regularly in Bucharest, including group shows at LaBorna, Sala Dalles, and the Centre for Visual Arts, as well as at Estopia Gallery, which represents her both in Bucharest and Lugano. Her solo exhibition in Switzerland in early 2020 further consolidated her position within the emerging scene of Romanian contemporary art. Aristotel’s ongoing exploration of resin situates her work at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and installation, where material experimentation becomes a language of introspection and urban sensibility.