Basel Social Club: Serban Ionescu, Matei Emanuel, Laurian Popa, Genti Korini
Serban Ionescu (b.1984, Romania) Serban Ionescu’s work spans across sculpture, painting, design and architecture. With his distinctive lines which emerge from his drawing practice, vibrant use of color and cartoonish gestures, Serban infuses his works with anthropomorphic shapes and a constant intuitive play on shifting scale and form. Serban has presented solo shows in New York at R & Company, Larrie Gallery, and in Antwerp, Belgium, at Everyday Gallery. His work has been published in New York Times, Wallpaper*, Architectural Digest, Dwell Magazine, DAMN Magazine and New York Magazine. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute and he has been an adjunct professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School Of Architecture from 2010-2016. Large scale projects like “Chapel For An Apple” and “Tower For An Hour” are his return to architecture. His book ‘A THING ON A TABLE IN A HOUSE’ was published by Apartamento in 2021. He is currently working on several European exhibitions for this year and a new book of drawings with Apartamento Publishing. Serban lives and works in between Brooklyn, NY and Brussels, BE.
Matei Emanuel ’s practice involves creating social ironies using objects made from various materials and techniques. The artist focuses on introducing works with serial product aesthetics, challenging the art world's sophisticated values and expectations that often dismiss the appreciation of a comical attitude. Matei Emanuel was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 2001. He completed his BA in Sculpture (2020–2023) and is currently pursuing his MA in Sculpture (2023–2026) at the National University of Arts in Bucharest . His recent solo exhibitions include Do I Need A Map To Travel To The Center Of The Earth? (Atelier 35, Bucharest, 2025) and A Matter Of Matter (Cazul 101, Bucharest, 2023) , alongside participations in major group exhibitions and art fairs, including RAD Art Fair (2024, 2025, 2026) .
Laurian Popa was born in 1980 in Arad, where he lives and works. He is a Romanian visual artist, licensed in Painting at the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timisoara, Prof. Constantin Flondor. In this newly created dimension, the meaning of objects becomes confused, strange, sometimes giving the impression of arranged images, well-ordered “installations” that are required to be painted, where the size of the objects is disproportionate, related to the actual size of the support. The attempt to observe the reality of an object, to “feel” the corporeality, to put it out of function and to place it in disfunction, is the way the artist intervenes, by which the object observed becomes another, in a new image. The combination of compositions, drawings and objects created by Laurian Popa, forms the image of a material figurative, bold but not familiar. A figurative that rather translates into reality an object with an unusual identity, a processing of remnants of objects gathered and recomposed into another dimension. With an obsolete identity, broken from the usual context, the image of the objects becomes an exercise of decryption, assimilation, recontextualization: a signal of the decadence of a "arranged" but real space.
Genti Korini in a departure from his long-standing exploration of post-socialist urban landscapes and abstract architectural forms, Genti Korini turns inward-toward the human figure, psychological space, and emotional dissonance. This new body of work marks a striking shift in tone and method, moving from structural analysis to existential portraiture, where the figures themselves become the architecture of meaning. Each composition presents a constellation of figures-elongated, stylized, and haunting-poised within atmospheric voids. These are not portraits in the traditional sense; they are psychological constructs, suspended in ambiguous relationships with one another and with the viewer. Korini's earlier geometric discipline remains, but now it recedes beneath layers of expressive gesture, saturated color, and emotive tension. Genti Korini’s artistic world draws from a diverse range of influences, including architectural forms, literature, and film. Thinking in paint and through painting, Korini has developed an intuitive and fluid approach that transforms these impressions through his practice. The figures, structures, and situations he depicts appear both open-ended and precisely observed, as if emerging from a fully formed narrative of which viewers can only catch a glimpse. His works distill narratives into images full of mystery and ambiguity, the exact nature of which remains elusive, even to the artist.
