The Function of Drawing
Dan Perjovschi, portrait, photo by Andrada Maria Ușvat. Courtesy of Muzeul Corneliu Miklosi
Dan Perjovschi | România – A Retrospective 1985-2025
September 3 – October 26, 2025
Timișoara, Romania
In a time when artists are often asked to be both mirrors and moral compasses of society, Dan Perjovschi continues to cultivate a radical simplicity that disarms through clarity. His drawings, inscribed directly on walls, glass façades, notebooks, and city trams, act as visual editorials: sharp, humorous, and lucid reflections on the world’s absurdities and urgencies. Refusing the comfort of stylistic formulas or the isolation of aesthetic self-reference, Perjovschi works with the immediacy of thought turned into gesture. For him, drawing is not a form but a function – a way of understanding, intervening, and keeping art ethically awake.
In conversation with Alex Mirutziu, the artist unfolds a rare synthesis between freedom and responsibility, between the notebook and the street. The conversation – occasioned by his retrospective exhibition Romania – A Retrospective 1985-2025 at the Corneliu Miklosi Museum in Timișoara – retraces four decades of practice that blur the line between art, journalism, and activism. Perjovschi speaks with the same precision and irony that define his line, reflecting on the transformations of his visual language, the risks of being absorbed by the system he critiques, and the fragile balance between usefulness and autonomy in art. What emerges is the portrait of an artist-citizen who, armed with a marker and a restless conscience, draws not for beauty, but for lucidity – for the fragile possibility of understanding the world together, one wall at a time.
Alex Mirutziu: In a context where the artist seems condemned to be, at the same time, both witness and the “defendant” of society – often read more through public reactions than through the depth of the artistic gesture – how do you define your position today?
Dan Perjovschi: I’m a reporter. My drawings are visual editorials. So I’m more the “witness” than the defendant of society. But I’m not a passive reporter. I’m involved. And I’m subjective. I don’t assume the tyranny of objectivity. I draw first in order to understand for myself. Then I try to make you understand too. But I don’t force you…
It’s no coincidence that, as soon as we got rid of censorship, I joined the free press. My 16-page gallery. There, by publishing “visual editorials”, I got used to being in the middle of the intellectual debate about the past, present, and future of the society I live in. And mind you – not just art-culture, but society as a whole: politics, social issues…
A.M.: Many of your colleagues and critics have pointed out the efficiency of your technique – the way you can intervene quickly, with a simple marker in your pocket, building an immediate and precise artistic commentary. Yet in the retrospective at the Corneliu Miklosi Museum, we also encounter works in other registers – installation, object, video, performance – that sketch a broader map of your trajectory. What has led you, in recent years, to choose almost exclusively this “running track” of drawing?
D.P.: Even if it sounds bombastic: freedom. Freedom of movement, of attitude. I’m free-style. No plans, no approvals, no constraining logistics. No huge budgets. Simple, effective, on the ball. In five minutes, I get on a plane and, before I land, I make the first drawings on the plane that I’ll plant on the wall… I’m serious, on every wall I try to be my best. I’m not playing.
Drawing is basic. Elementary. Sometimes my notebook drawings are called sketches or doodles. They’re neither. They’re not sketches because they don’t lead to something “greater.” What you see is what’s transferred onto the wall. I draw ideas, not drawings. They’re not doodles either, because they don’t come out of a mindless hand… no. I repeat a drawing dozens of times until I can execute it with my eyes closed, and then it seems spontaneous. Ideas are born and refined in notebooks and in exhibitions. Sometimes they reach their final form five or ten years after their first appearance…
My drawing is performative, activist, charitable. It’s ethical, not aesthetic. But as you saw in the Retrospective, between the drawings on walls and glass façades, there are artists’ books, collections of postcards or photographs, collages, wire drawings, etc. – a whole menagerie (laughs).
A.M.: There’s a moment when, after navigating all the informational chaos, you feel you’ve reached an essential formula – a text, a drawing – that manages to concentrate everything into a sharp message. It’s like a metabolism of urgency, of a burning present that you try to catch on the move. You scan news, you read, you get involved, you react – like an Intel Core Ultra. How do you compress all this speed into a “poem”-phrase, a prompt with immediate impact that still speaks to our shared reason and lucidity?
D.P.: Yes. Sometimes I pull it off. Other times I need years and millimetric changes, or to cut five words down to three, until it feels like that’s it, it can’t get more concise. The thing is: how do you compress an entire film into a single frame? How do you overlap gravity, humour, and intellect in a few lines? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.
A few times, a drawing came to me exactly as it should. Most of the time, I draw and redraw and redraw. You can see in my notebooks how the idea is twisted every which way. Some I can’t find solutions for… others, yes. That’s why, other times, I’m dead tired after an exhibition. I feel as if I’ve physically extracted images and ideas from my head.
If you ask me how and when I know a drawing is okay, I don’t know how to answer. Probably by drawing weekly for Revista 22 and seeing my colleagues’ reactions, I developed a metabolism for reading situations and concepts visually. They made me realise when a drawing is point aimed, point hit. But not all are like that. Some I’m the only one who likes.
A.M.: To what extent does your creation function as a dialogue with society – as a form of collective “consultation” – or, on the contrary, as an inner soliloquy? Taking into account the ongoing performative work present in the exhibition, which can also be read as a graph of the evolution of themes and technical formulations from 1985 to today, it’s noticeable that, in the years before ’90, your interest seemed more oriented toward exploring inner life, with a softer tone, less marked by explicitly political themes – although The Great Portrait, for example, already introduces such a direction in the economy of this historical development.
D.P.: Yes. Until December 1989, I couldn’t draw society as it was. So I resorted to disguises: Alone and Grey, The Great Portrait, Fish Eyes, actions in the fields or wrapping and drawing the apartment where Lia and I lived. As I see things now, it’s a gesture of solidarity in and for the community. I illustrate Revista 22 (and publish inserts in many magazines at home and abroad), and I’ve been making a 30-meter drawing in public space in Sibiu for 15 years. Non-stop.
And in the last 10–15 years, I’ve become a “drawing provider” for a lot of civic, charitable, or cultural causes. That is, I’m present in many places: T-shirts, protest placards, Facebook pages. All the time… Between 1985 and 1990, “opening up” meant energetic, constant activity in a frozen society with no future. After 1990, I exploded. And now I unfold across multiple territories and slices – local, global, real, virtual. I see the artist’s role not as decorator of the living room, but as changer of the mentalities of living. I’m more with the “living” than with the “room”.
A.M.: How much do the reactions stirred by your art – including online – matter to you, as a way of taking the pulse of today’s world or as part of an artistic reflection process in itself?
D.P.: They matter. Like a kind of GPS… But they’ve never stopped or diverted me. It’s true that I make a kind of art that’s quite populated and appreciated. Both the museum director and the museum guard like me. You said it well – I take the pulse. And in Timișoara, I sit in the gallery and watch what people react to. I talk with parents, children, colleagues, people who have no clue about art, and specialists. I’m present (and available) in the Retrospective.
And yes, I’m interested in people’s opinions, even if they don’t match mine exactly. I get into discussions and online debates. I participate.
A.M.: Do you think the artist’s role is more relevant when reacting to reality or when provoking it – metaphorically turning the easel into a protest sign? And yet, what happens when irony, once subversive, becomes currency – when critique starts to circulate, to be sold, to be reposted, losing its bite? In such a context, isn’t there a risk that the critical gesture is absorbed by the very system it denounces?
D.P.: Yes, there’s a risk I’ll be absorbed. That’s why I let myself be erased. Ninety per cent of what I’ve drawn has been erased. So I can bite again (laughs). But look, my interest isn’t to be a troublemaker. Lia says the Dada era is over. Now we don’t want to jam, to make noise. Now we want to make sense. To have our voice, line, image heard and seen. We have something to say. We have exceptional training, expertise, and we understand the world comparatively, because we’ve taken it on foot and with our eyes. My intention isn’t to hit, but to produce understanding, knowledge, and expertise. And I’m interested in the art world fifty-fifty. That is, what the world outside art says seems just as important to me. Lately, I’ve been more present on activist and NGO platforms.
In the Retrospective, NGOs working with refugees or the “Dăruiește Viață” association, which is building the medical campus at Marie Curie in Bucharest, as well as political science scholars, educators, were involved, highlighted, and gave presentations. I don’t think I’m subversive in the old sense of the word. But for 35 years, I’ve been making a statement by drawing inside museums and magazines all over the world. At MoMA, but also at Pata Rât. At the Van Abbemuseum, but also at Roșia Montană.
A.M.: Do you believe that art and your public stance can function as a genuine form of opposition, essential to a society’s health, then?
D.P.: Yes. That’s what I’ve been doing for quite a few years. I told you, I’m a drawing provider. For associations fighting poverty and exclusion, for feminist platforms (my wall in Sibiu has a section dedicated to A.L.E.G.). Only I don’t see myself in “opposition”. More like a kind of scope or microscope. I have time to delve deeply into a subject and can represent it publicly as a drawing. Of course, I’m critical of the nationalist, fascistoid excesses of those in power. But many times I find myself in opposition to the opposition or to my fellow artists. See the nonsense of SCAF, “the biggest art festival of blah blah”.
But honestly, I think I have done and do a service to society through my public projects (in public space, but also in public museums or as inserts in magazines). A sour art critic accused me of preaching to the already converted. Possibly, although I see a bunch reconverting to nationalism now. But the wall in Sibiu and the trams in Iași and Timișoara are for everyone.
A.M.: But would you say that you see yourself as a catalyst of collective consciousness, addressing both the novice and the specialist, in an endeavour that somehow prevents the world’s moral bankruptcy?
D.P.: Ahh… I’m not much into the collective. My only team is Lia. Otherwise, me, lonely world. I’d like to answer that I speak on behalf of the many. But no. What I propose is a possibility of identifying with an image or a conceptual-visual approach. Somehow, I visualise what many people think. But I don’t do polls, and I don’t go by common taste. I do keep a bit in mind what people like, dislike, what’s understood at first glance, what isn’t… but I don’t radically change either the approach or the drawings themselves.
Yes, I try to speak a more popular language (scribbles, cartoons, “my niece could do that”) and to make it as accessible as possible (T-shirts, bags, walls, floors, Comme des Garçons).
I wouldn’t call it moral bankruptcy. Yes, I get indignant like everyone. But I like both the indignant world and the non-indignant. I like the world as world. As it is, with its extraordinariness, but also with its falls into the abyss. Every week, I see evidence of courage and heroism both in exhibition halls and in disadvantaged or downright oppressive communities. It’s harder to do something empathetic and public in Slănic, Moldova, than in Bucharest.
Actually, no, I’m wrong – those who fight in the capital to save a park, the Dâmbovița, a cultural space, are heroes, too. Because of these extraordinary people, the world is bearable. For them, I’m a provider. The truth is that many of my drawings and themes need cultural context. You need to know at least minimally what it’s about… so I’m not exactly universally accessible (laughs).
A.M.: In this retrospective exhibition titled Romania, there are at least two works that seem to clearly illustrate this attitude. I’m thinking especially of the platform onto which your diaries and work calendars are collaged, but also of that impressive CV greeting visitors at the entrance. I’d say it doesn’t just greet them, it dominates them – through its monumental dimension, printed on the wall, it turns a bureaucratic object into a strange, meaning-laden artefact. Even the CV has its label, where you note: “For me, the CV is a project”. And your explanation continues: “Almost all my solo exhibitions and most of the group ones required my physical presence. A bodily engagement. With or without an audience…”.
If, between 1985 and 2025, as you mention on the exhibition label – “I wanted to be everywhere” – that means you operated a minimal selection, following rather a continuous flow of participation and perhaps less a deliberate selection process. Yet any project fundamentally involves choices, selections, positions. How then, under these conditions, can a CV – no matter how extensive – be perceived as a project?
D.P.: Yes. Almost from the beginning, I appeared only in selected places, in okay contexts, on good themes and causes. When you’re young, you take whatever comes your way; you don’t have much choice. Not much, but some. At least minimal. I caught this rise during communism, when options were limited. I cut my teeth with Atelier 35, the youth organisation of the Artists’ Union. In Oradea. In a good, competitive environment. That was my art school. Putting on exhibitions, hauling works, arranging works, moderating feedback, etc. When freedom came, I was ready.
When I say I would have taken part in everything, I mean all the cool exhibitions, all the biennials in the world, all the interesting themes. Honestly, even now I’d take part in everything. I can’t physically anymore, but I’d like to. I only managed the ones I was invited to, that is, a fraction of what’s interesting on the globe. And where I was invited, with few exceptions, I didn’t refuse anything (when two projects overlapped, I found a solution; for example, at the Műcsarnok, when I landed on the opening day coming from I don’t know which project, and from the airport I went straight to the venue and, while the curator Livia Páldi was delivering the opening speech, I started drawing… and I drew while people drank their prosecco – and for another week after that).
I consider the period between 2005 and 2008 a work, a performance, because every week I was on a wall in a major museum. At a certain point in a career, the statement you make clicks: you become a category, and you’re invited as such – activism, politics, commentary, humour, critical attitude, “intellectual graffiti”, visual editoria, etc. And invitations come along those lines and for certain themes. That’s how the selection is made. Those who invite me make it. They know what I do and how I do it. And they want exactly that. I do a solo show (solo wall, solo lobby, solo ceiling, solo glass façade, etc.), even when I’m in group exhibitions.
That’s why the CV is a work. Because I drew every line of it. The works weren’t trucked from one museum to another; it was me, Spider-Man, from one wall to another, physically and mentally. I’m telling you: my CV is performance art.
A.M.: Today, when the aesthetic seems more and more a closed territory, administered by connoisseurs – a space of “correct” forms and educated gazes – you choose to suspend it. Your drawings – direct, vulnerable, anti-spectacular – don’t pursue beauty but lucidity; they don’t propose objects, but positions. What meaning does the aesthetic still have for you, then? Is it a liberating renunciation – a way of taking art out of its self-referential bubble – or, on the contrary, an approach to the raw materiality of the world, to its immediate urgencies?
D.P.: Both. Both liberation (I can be wrong and change my mind on the same wall) and a kind of response to the urgencies of the contemporary world. I don’t deny the aesthetic. I’m simply not that interested in it. Or, anyway, in what people mean by aesthetic. I say I make ethical exhibitions, not aesthetic ones. But you should know I compose my drawings. They look all over the place. They’re not. It’s more a composition of subjects than a formal one, but even so, there are crowded areas and calmer ones, textures, accents, etc. I don’t seek harmonies, but I don’t avoid them either. I don’t seek dissonances, but I don’t avoid the grinding either.
And then, if you think about it, black-and-white is already artistic – see film or photography. My black wall has weight, and the white drawing, from a distance, is conceptually decorative (laughs)! In Timișoara, the rolling platforms aren’t placed at random. The collages on the platforms aren’t anti-aesthetic. The accumulations have something poetic… I’m not trying to draw ugly. I don’t make an aesthetic out of ugliness. I’m trying to fix and transmit ideas. If that means breaking rules of composition or some canon, so be it.
Let me use another description. I’m not obsessed with clothes. I dress comfortably and in black, because it’s easier to wash clothes of the same colour, since I’m on the road and go with a bag full of laundry to those coin-op machines. It’s more practical. I like people who are well dressed and tasteful. Just not for me, for myself, I’m not interested. I don’t have time for that effort. Same in art. I don’t have time for harmonic effort, because I’m focused on the idea. Sure, I’d like it to look good too, to be attractive.
A.M.: The question also comes from a Barthesian intuition: perhaps the authentic energy of art is born not from fascination but from the refusal of the obvious – from an active boredom with the already-consumed image. How does your practice place itself in this zone of lucidity – an aesthetics without metaphor, an exposure of the real without disguise?
D.P.: I hadn’t thought about it, but maybe you’re right. I, for one, got bored with successful painterly formulas, with the same way of making, exhibiting, and valorising art. I wanted something else, and I found this continuous flow in which I move from one wall to another at speed, with gestures in speed and with my whole body engaged in drawing. I define myself as an artist-citizen. That is, a participant involved in the life of the city. I don’t want to be something decorative. I don’t want to be admired. I want to be understood. I don’t have mysteries. I have urgencies.
A.M.: How do you perceive the tension between art and the idea of “usefulness”? Can art preserve its freedom and expressive power without constantly being called upon to justify, repair, or give meaning to the reality from which it springs? In a context where society seems to ask more and more often for an immediate reaction from the artist – a position, an answer, a solution – do you think there’s a risk that poetic freedom and the autonomy of the artistic gesture will be overshadowed?
D.P.: Yes. It’s a complex discussion. I don’t have answers. I only have a few experiences. Now we artists have to generate audiences, to bring tourists to the city. We have to justify our meagre budgets with added value, with how many jobs we create and blah-blah-blah. When I say the artist must be engaged, must be ethical, not aesthetic, I’m talking about myself. I must be engaged. I must be ethical. The fact that other artists paint pansies is good. If we all drew in black-and-white, we’d die of boredom.
Now, I don’t believe one hundred per cent in the autonomy of the artistic gesture, because then we’d do it every day at home, only and only for ourselves. I no longer believe in pure freedom of expression. For me, there’s only freedom and responsibility of expression.
But I do think some of us must have the right and support to do things that no one understands. That no one understands yet. Or things that will lead nowhere. Who tolerates failure today? Who understands today that you have to mess up many times to get somewhere? Who funds that pre-success messing-up phase? So, I don’t believe art “has to” be utilitarian, but I also don’t think it should be cut off from society, made only for a niche of millionaires.
A.M.: In your path, marked by civic engagement and an active social conscience, how do you negotiate the balance between the need to intervene – to be present, lucid, responsible – and the desire to defend art’s freedom not to “serve” any practical purpose? For you, is art a form of resistance through reflection, a reaction to the world, or a space of suspension where thought can remain useless, but precisely for that reason essential?
D.P.: Well, I think art should have a practical side… That’s why I ended up on tote bags, placards, and T-shirts. That’s why I do workshops with children, retirees, artists, or engineers. But that’s not the right way to put it. Not “should”. Rather, it would be good. I believe artists have something just as important to say as politicians, architects, doctors. We’re not useless, floating on pink-Aperol clouds. No. Sometimes we see better than a minister what’s what.
You phrased it very poetically. I’ll answer pragmatically: I don’t want to be useless in any Deleuzian, Lacanian, or Bolojanian variant. I, as an artist, know I have a very important place and role in global society, and I’m not going to give it up for anything.
