Victor Man, “Flowering Ego”

The work of this Romanian painter who divides his time between Berlin and his hometown of Cluj features figurative subjects—often portrait heads—shrouded by a Mittle-Europan gloom conjured out of disparate sources such as Blue-Period Picasso, Balthus and Medieval painting. Upbeat these canvases are not, but they reveal an elegantly Gothic sensibility behind their takes on the eternal themes of sex and death.