The story tells that a Chinese emperor asked a painter to draw the most beautiful dragons ever seen. After years of study, the painter came back to the palace and ran two lines – a yellow one and a green one – on each side of the throne. The discontent emperor condemned him to death. But on the night before sentence execution, a dream made him visit the cave the master had worked in. Right from the entrance, the emperor could see the most wonderfully painted dragons, which, as he was going on deeper into the cave, looked gradually simplified, drawn in to essence. The painter was set free and rewarded like a lord.
In the story of FRAGMENTARIUM, it’s neither about imperial treasures nor about merciless sentences, but about the same deep simplicity master Sorin Ilfoveanu’s labels display in front of the beholder. The memorial demarche put forth by the drawing cycle FRAGMENTARIUM surprises the key moments of human existence interpreted by some characters broken off from any context of interpersonal relationship, obliged to introspect their inner world – since man feels always lonely in front of the great truths. The characters imagined by professor and school creator Sorin Ilfoveanu required several decades of approach until they could retell the time of his life in some lines, from the angle or through the agency of an auxiliary turned magic: the bird, the cat, the musical instrument.

The FRAGMENTARIUM Collection was bottled in 2000 glass bottles.