Matei Emanuel (b.2001) is a Bucharest-based visual artist working primarily in sculpture, while also employing a diverse set of materials and techniques in his installations and aluminium scratch drawings. His distinctive, vigorous artistic language embraces irony and humour as modes of storytelling that disrupt the often haughty outlook of the contemporary art world.
Emanuel reflects on the dichotomy between nature and culture, the often morally dubious drive behind human progress, as well as on the power of reverie and creativity. Many of his works retain a childlike form and candour, even when dealing with weighty subjects. His pieces bear traces of anticipation and nostalgia, inviting the viewer to reclaim an often-lost sense of wonder.
His distinctive, vigorous artistic language embraces irony and humour as modes of storytelling that disrupt the often haughty outlook of the contemporary art world.
Playing with the World, Making It Bow
In the 2025 solo show at Atelier 35, Do I Need a Map to Travel to the Center of the Earth?, Emanuel assembled pieces which could have been found on the desk of a very perceptive child or a fanciful scientist. Among them is Through the Center of the Orange-Planet (2025), a large object made of painted aluminium and wood. What first appears to be an orange peel void of pulp, upon closer inspection, turns into a humanoid figure lying on its side. The shift in perspective transforms the orange’s inconspicuous columella into an erect phallus. The titular reference to the planet casts yet another frame of perception, in which the male organ becomes the core of the world.
This instance of a childhood game — in which perishable objects gain meaning, often with a perverted edge — appears in a 1998 video performance by Louise Bourgeois. She recalls her father peeling a tangerine in this particular way as a source of amusement at social functions, only to say that the little figure is so pretty it must be his daughter. Bourgeois, in a child’s embarrassment, detested the humour and its psychoanalytic undertones. A Freudian reading can be extended to Emanuel’s sculpture, where the anthropomorphised peel-planet is centred around the penis, as in an attempt to protect it. The artist exposes masculinity as a fragile concept, and the penis as a symbol of its social power; castration would mean an almost universal collapse.
Another oversized object in the curated cabinet of curiosities is As a child, I used to dream about great things. Bronze, aluminium and Necuron are made to resemble a bicycle that has been assembled from stationery supplies: a paper clip for a handlebar, a safety pin for a pedal, a binder clip for a seat, and two coins for wheels — the rear one an American half-dollar, the front one a Russian ruble.
Still, juxtaposing the childish enthusiasm of the scientist with tangible references to American-Soviet aggression gives the piece an air of absurdity, allowing the viewer to approach this rather bleak message from a new, playful angle.
The project’s overarching backstory suggests that the bike is owned by an imaginary scientist who combines innocence and curiosity in his research endeavours. The character assembled his own mode of transport, inspired by the dream of progress. The bike is fueled by the force that drove the Space Race, a competitive clash between two superpowers, which ultimately led humans to conquer, however symbolically, outer space. A bike, though much more benign in its reach than a rocket, symbolises the will for exploration shared by the imaginary scientist and Cold War engineers, perhaps undermining the righteousness of such desire. Still, juxtaposing the childish enthusiasm of the scientist with tangible references to American-Soviet aggression gives the piece an air of absurdity, allowing the viewer to approach this rather bleak message from a new, playful angle.
Though not apparent at first, questions of the moral grounds supporting the human drive to control nature take centre stage. Emanuel’s playful reinterpretation of the scientific process bestows the imaginary scientist’s naive curiosity with an ambiguous legacy. When machinery is reduced to stationery, the ambition of his endeavour appears both absurd and strangely endearing. If the project’s title, Do I Need a Map to Travel to the Center of the Earth? acts as a research question, its follow-up might be: Do I only want to understand it, or do I want to reshape it?
The Cycle of Life is Organic
In the 2026 project Memento Mori (Vanitas with Emojis and Still Life 2), Emanuel scratches out images on aluminium sheets painted in vibrant colours. The revealed drawing in Still Life 2 depicts a skull alongside everyday, modern objects such as a lamp, an electric clock and a soap-bubble container. Although Vanitas with Emojis retains a more traditional interpretation of items associated with the trope — a wilted flower, books and an hourglass — the objects take the form of emojis in a grid-like composition. There is something inherently humorous about this simplistic, emojified language, and about the “canvases” themselves. They resemble oversized Post-it notes, quite literally seeming to say “Reminder: your days are numbered”.
The influence of memento mori on artistic tradition is long and solemn, though direct reminders of death have perhaps never been as oblique as they are today. Modern culture, with its advancements but, more so, distractions, moves our thoughts away from ephemerality. Emanuel homes in on this lack, presenting the, after all, morbid message through a relatable and amusing visual language. In a witty though cynical take on a modern person’s routine, he treats the reminder of death as something comically mundane, as if mortality were just another item on the to-do list.
Originally, the works were presented alongside the aforementioned 2025 installation, acting as a looming warning for the imaginary scientist. Despite the fascination with science, progress, machinery, say — culture — a human remains part of the natural world, in his fleeting condition.
In a witty though cynical take on a modern person’s routine, he treats the reminder of death as something comically mundane, as if mortality were just another item on the to-do list.
More of Emanuel’s scratch drawings can be viewed in the ongoing group show G(U)ARD-IAN at Jecza Gallery. Each of the five large-scale pieces depicts a portrait and a three-quarter view of a notable visual artist at the bottom, alongside studies of different bird species in the top part: Jean-Michel Basquiat shares the surface with a swan, Mona Hatoum with a stork.
Emanuel took the exhibition’s theme — the fence — as a boundary separating “us” from “them”, one that includes or excludes. These works build upon his previous explorations of the boundaries between human and non-human worlds, pushing the ecocritical idea that the potential entanglement between nature and culture, artists and birds, could be seen and even embraced. The aluminium sheets, larger than 2 square metres, are crafted to mimic creased pages ripped out of notebooks. Such form endows the pieces with a seeming offhandedness, perhaps cheekily suggesting that the relationship between human culture and the natural world is constantly revised, drafted on a huge piece of aluminium “paper”.
His oeuvre, though still taking shape, makes a confident statement while retaining a playful lightness of expression. With humour and curiosity, Emanuel tackles weighty questions, imbuing the attempts to understand the world with wonder and absurdity.
BIO
Matei Emmanuel was born in Bucharest, Romania. He graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest with a BA in 2023 and an MA in 2025, both in Sculpture. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Romania, as well as in group shows, notably at RAD Art Fair and Basel Social Club. He has been represented by Jecza Gallery since June 2026.
