San Diego-based multidisciplinary artist C Fodoreanu grew up along the road there

Entryway to "writings," featuring "Elijah Breaking the Sky" (2025)
 

By VITTORIA BENZINE April 18. 2025

Every summer, many thousands of Orthodox Christians set out for Transylvania’s Nicula Monastery, which houses the wonder-working Madonna of Nicula, an icon that wept for a month in 1669, as legend has it. San Diego-based multidisciplinary artist C Fodoreanu grew up along the road there. Amidst the many households hoping to score a quick buck by selling basil or flowers to pilgrims, Fodoreanu’s family honored his great grandfather’s legacy as the last icon writer of the old reverse glass tradition by making their own relics and putting them out pro bono.

That was the first time Fodoreanu ever made art for others. This family game was equal parts behavioral science course and competition—regarding “who's better, and whose icons are being picked up by strangers,” he said, “always trying to make them colorful and playful and serious.”

Today, Fodoreanu is a practicing physician—with a bachelor’s in philosophy, a Harvard medical degree, and a new MFA from New York’s School of the Visual Arts. He’s shown photographs at Untitled Art in Miami Beach with the program. His first book got reviewed by Hyperallergic. And, his new solo exhibition, titled “writings,” opens on Saturday at LOS/NR Gallery in La Jolla, San Diego.

Some people just have insatiable energy like that. “writings” embodies the breadth of Fodoreanu’s frenetic practice, bridging photography and videos from the past 20 years with site-specific installation and seven brand new paintings, harkening back to Fodoreanu’s earliest icon endeavors. At first glance they really look like they’re by a child. “I appreciate this idea of not necessarily being very conscious when you draw,” Fodoreanu said, “Almost like a sleight of hand to show that heart, that vitality, that was so celebrated by peasant artists back in the day.”

"writings," featuring "house" (2021) from the "fables" series and "Archangels Michael and Gabriel" (2025)
 

Fodoreanu’s formal art education—somewhat ironically—taught him to distrust beauty, which often impedes, the way society mistakes people for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to facial symmetry. Beauty commands attention. It also obfuscates. “You lose the message,” Fodoreanu explained.

Thus, these colorful, acrylic facades anchor the show’s dense, Arte Povera-inspired scenography, spanning a shallow tank of water, several hanging ropes, tree branches, and three gazing balls that reflect Fodoreanu’s paintings—as well as the photographs that surround them. Selections from his “traces” and “fables” series emphasize interconnection by drawing parallels between bodies and landscapes, and memory and botany. Two shots from his “sub-limin-als” series feature rogue streaks of color atop their scenes of people superimposed on Roman architecture. The printer malfunctioned. Fodoreanu embraced it. A neon sculpture flickers from the back. A video triptych scintillates on. It’s not surprising that EDM fuels this artist’s oeuvre.

Fodoreanu’s medical practice significantly informs his work, too. The field lays bare the human condition, stripping divisive dressings like creed, race, and class. “Heart attacks happen to everybody,” Fodoreanu said. “A birth happens in every family. A bad diagnosis or cure happens to everybody. As they move through my office, I notice the broad strokes of humanity.” This drives his disparate practice’s unifying mission: “I want to say we're all the same,” he explained.

"writings," featuring "no mask" (2021) from the "fables" series and "The Forty Martyrs" (2025)

To do that, he’s taking on Christian imagery, some of the most recognizable around the world. Fodoreanu lived in Nicula until he graduated high school, when his family relocated to Southern California. As a kid, religion had been everywhere. “It was always beautiful and colorful,” he said, “But I never got into it.” As time wears on, Fodoreanu finds himself returning to spirituality.

Rather than recreating Romanian icons in the Middle Ages style favored by the genre’s living painters, Fodoreanu has joined the ranks of artists reinterpreting Christian imagery, joining his contemporary vantage with his distinct immigrant experience. The results eschew shading and artificial aging for flat, bright hues evoking both clip art and the northern New Mexico Santeros.

Elijah appears at the exhibition’s opening, barreling through the skies in a horse-drawn chariot and whipping up squalls, per Orthodox folklore—which one Reddit user aptly compared with Biblical fanfiction. “I feel like there's a lot of thunder and storm happening,” Fodoreanu remarked, regarding present circumstances. Inside, he’s also painted a tribute to saints Michael and Gabriel, who offered the young artist a sense of queer kinship, since they’re the only two saints celebrated together. Even the title of the show pokes fun at the Catholic Church’s pearl clutching. “In Romania,” he noted, “you can only write the word of God. You cannot paint it.”

"writings," featuring "Jesus Making Wine" (2024)

“writings” also debuts Fodoreanu’s take on the 40 Martyrs of San Sebaste, honoring the “elite SEAL team of the Roman army” who chose death over leaving Christianity. “In a way, we’re all martyrs,” Fodoreanu remarked. “I think it speaks to this idea of repetitive life, and that cycle that’s happening.” He’s kept numerous elements of the icon’s traditional portrayal, the stacked composition and floating souls. God is still watching, but this one resembles an acid deity. Most iterations of this icon also feature identical, rippling physiques. His are quotidian. Diverse, even.

Fodoreanu’s own patron—Luke, saint of physicians, artist, and more—is notably absent. Despite medicine’s recurring role as subject matter for painters, there aren’t many practicing artist-doctors—that the canon knows of. Fodoreanu isn’t just making art on the side to ‘cleanse himself,’ as he put it (though his work still does that too.) His trajectory reveals an intent to make waves in the objective part of the subjective ‘art world’—the part history remembers, specifically.

"writings," featuring "I am the Bread which came down from Heaven" (2025)
  

“If I'm just a doctor by myself and I stay at home and I don't see the patients, what's the point of being a doctor and having all that knowledge?” Fodoreanu mused. “If I'm an artist and I just do my work from home, and it just sits in my walls or my garage, then what's the point of making?”