Artist Marius Ritiu starts with a sheet of industrial copper, heats it with a blowtorch, drapes it over a boulder, and starts hammering. “I am basically trashing the metal,” he says of his process.
Thousands of blows later, the artist has produced a material that looks like the surface of the moon, which he cuts apart and solders back together to produce chairs, tables, and other sculptural forms. “The works I’m making seem to be copied from nature,” he says, “but the actual shape I present in the end does not exist in nature.”
Born in Satu Mare, in Romania’s Transylvania region, Ritiu first worked in clay after an art teacher recognized his talent for sculpture. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sculpture, he set off with a fellow artist on what was meant to be a four-day scouting trip through Europe’s leading art cities. That was in 2010; Antwerp was the first stop. “In the first six months we were here, we were accepted into the Academy, met a collector with a foundation, and had a gallery show,” he recalls. “Everything happened very fast.” He never left.
