Serban Ionescu's wonderfully whimsical sculptures frame 'The Great Outdoors'

The best way to describe multidisciplinary artist Serban Ionescu's works is perhaps as an oddball collage of colourful bits and bobs. This is very much a commendation of the Paris-based artist's capacity for imagination and form-making. His playful wielding of what seems two-dimensional—lines, planes and shapes—turns inert material such as steel and aluminium into impressions of anthropomorphic creatures. The Romanian artist has been working on different iterations of these large colourful sculptures for almost five years, tweaking form, format and material.

New sculptural designs by the artist are currently on view at the LA-based art gallery Marta as part of a solo exhibition. The Great Outdoors, showcasing paintings and sculpture artworks by Ionescu, is on view from April 19 – May 31, 2025, with works placed in the gallery's anteroom, the complex's courtyard and on the building's corrugated façade. Ionescu's colourful, bric-a-brac work seems to take over the minimalist white cubes of Marta, transforming the staid space into a series of fantastical frames.

The human-scale designs for the artefacts with seemingly unintentional cut-outs not only add a vibrancy to the spaces, but seem to invite different ways of seeing. Three large metal designs are strategically placed in the courtyard, where visitors first encounter them, as if they are in conversation. The design of one offers a fresh, altogether new perspective on the other, while the garden's flora brings the designs to life.

As mentioned in the exhibition's official press release, through these works, the sculpture artist is paying homage to the frame, whether that is the cinematic frame, a painting's frame or the landscape that architecture frames. Containing, structuring and supporting a multitude of perspectives is also the reason the show is eponymously named after Howard Deutch's 1988 comedy film. Through the works, the architect turned product designer hopes to examine systems of framing and how they seem to contain within a fixed perimeter, all the chaos of 'the great outdoors'. If the frame orders what is insurmountable, it's exactly that which Ionescu seems to outline.

For instance, in the works in the anteroom, compositions rely not only on the form of the artefact, but also bleed out into the context. They are as much part of the structure as they are their own separate entity, ornamenting the space. There seems to be no inherent logic to any of the sculptures Ionescu creates, though they are all meant to be functional designs, according to him. One could look at the shapes forever, finding new things to admire each time.

Whether that is through the shapes that Ionescu uses, with circles conspiring with rectangles, freehand outlines colluding with triangles, the general hooks and hanging bits holding each of the elements together, each object seems alive in distinct ways. There is a certain painterly quality to the works, apart from simply being whimsical, because of the methodical treatment of the surfaces. The patina of some of the steel members is placed against the bright reds and blues to achieve a sense of timelessness, almost.

But what is perhaps most personable about the droll objects is the names Ionescu has given them. Each has been given a human or robot-sounding name, only making the anthropomorphic strand clearer for the artefacts. There is a wonderful sense of play to the sculptures that Ionescu's practice upholds, that promise to make any context they're placed in a vibrant carnival, the frames inviting curiosity and the colours an animating force.

Serban Ionescu's 'The Great Outdoors' is on view from April 19 – May 31, 2025, at the Marta art gallery in Los Angeles.