Dan Perjovschi

Dan Perjovschi’s practice is informed by the incisive social criticism of humorous cartoons. With a profound ability to respond to his context, he deploys irony to comment cuttingly on local and global politics, economics, and culture. Perjovschi’s unique language and technique—comic-strip-style sketches of persons, objects, places, and symbols drawn onto walls with either marker-pens or chalk—has found an ideal environment at Oporto’s Culturgest, located within a branch of a major Portuguese bank. Perjovschi’s countless, chaotically arranged white drawings occupy several black partitions, challenging dominant visions of the world. The artist examines, for instance, universal questions (love and death), intellectual debates (about the presence of capitalism in formerly communist countries, for example), and current international affairs (the recent admission of countries, such as his native Romania, to the EU). The artist sallies forth with provocative remarks on Portuguese issues as well, including this year’s referendum on abortion legalization, the ongoing TV contest to elect the most important national historical figure, and the policies of Oporto’s firebrand mayor. As revealed in an image of a group of museum visitors who read a caption instead of looking at the painting they face, Perjovschi’s work subtly yet poignantly highlights the absurdity of some of Western society’s established habits and customs, making him one of today’s savviest examiners of the collective conscience.