Observation rather than ornament
The Overture describes Decorative Art as a language of colour, line, surface and composition through which perception can be held long enough for another person to encounter it. Alex Manole’s art makes that principle concrete. His school director praises him for treating observation as work rather than decoration.
His pictures do not ask Iași to become grander than it is. They dwell instead on overlooked surfaces, passing people and ordinary urban structures. The artistic act becomes one of attention: to see what is already present, and to make another person look again.
A city held in fragments
When Alex speaks about his own practice, he begins with buildings. Rooflines, tram wires and badly repaired walls arrive before people do. That sequence matters because the city is not merely backdrop in his work; it is an archive of use, repair, movement and neglect.
He also acknowledges the ethics of looking. Observation can become possession if the subject is made smaller by it. His mature position is therefore not that an artist has a right to take everything in, but that seeing carries responsibility. The resulting work is allowed to remain untidy and complicated rather than being polished into a simpler story about Iași or the people living there.
Art as witness
The saga places Alex’s graduation exhibition beside the rediscovery of works attributed to Octav Băncilă, making the event a conversation between inherited visual memory and new attention. Alex receives the fictional Octav Băncilă Laureate Prize, while the programme describes his practice as a continuation of art understood as witness rather than nostalgia.
That is the through-line of his visual work: memory is not preserved by freezing the city. It is preserved by looking closely enough to notice change.