Architecture
Questioning contextualism in a post-comunist social system with minimal budgets.
Interior Design
Or how to imprint a touch of style to mass produced communist flats
Graphic Arts
Minimalist visual experiments with the latest digital tools available.
Exhibitions
Civilised vandalism and other forms of criticism towards society and the establishment.
Electronic Music
Exploring new means of expression where man meets machine
Paul Seling I All about art and beyond…
I was born in 1977 in Baia Mare, a small mining city at the northern Romanian border with Ukraine. I lived my first 12 years under one of the darkest communist regimes in the entire Eastern Europe. 2 hours of state controlled TV propaganda a day, continuous power blackouts, lack of basic things like hot water, food and of course, the continuous fear of talking to anyone about anything significant. Rumors about people being taken by night by the secret police and never returning to their families. We lived under continuous terror and control, and this had a powerful impact on us all, later in life.
I managed to sneak into the local Art School in 1984 and studied classical music for 8 years. I played piano and clarinet, and serious music theory. After the communism regime fell in 1989 I saw new horizons opening. I could finally enjoy western music and became a huge fan of ambient and electronica, avidly collecting all the bootleg cassettes I could find In the market. In 1992 I moved to high school and forgot everything about art. I became interested in math and physics, studied English intensively, rarely joining my sister`s jazz-fusion band as a sax player.
Late 1995 I saw by accident on TV a brief presentation of Frank Lloyd Wright`s works. I was stunned. That was the moment I told myself I wanted to become an architect. I gave up science and got back to art, again, by entering the “Ion Mincu Architecture Institute”, in Bucharest, in 1996. I started university with a strong ambition to become a star architect. I was looking up to new heroes like Mies Van Der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Tadao Ando, Luis Kahn. Then, in another twist of events in 1997 my sister, Paula, became a pop icon over night. By pure accident we started working together on song production, coming up with a few that became quite popular So yes, I started to reconsider, again, my entire future career.
I kept going to university while studying and working on electronic music production at night for the following 5 years. I was so dedicated and involved that 2002 found me on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I graduated and got my architect`s diploma while going to psychotherapy and finally being diagnosed with bipolar syndrome.
I was supposed to go on meds for the rest of my life. After trying a few types of treatment I decided I was going to live with the illness without any. So the most fascinating journey started. For the following 14 years, until 2016, I lived in a never ending rollercoaster : deep depression and intense mania were the only states I could be in. It was a time of incredible creativity and most of the graphic works you can see on this website are made under such circumstances. I have tried numerous alternative methods to treat my condition, yet nothing really worked. I sometimes blame this situation on drug and alcohol abuse, back in college times, yet the truth will never be known.
in 2016 a new type of medication was released on the market, and I decided to try it. It worked wonderfully, so I completely recovered in a matter of months. For the first time in my life I gained stability and complete balance. Yet the side effects of such chemicals are so damaging that my life expectancy is supposed to have dropped with a significant amount of years.
This is actually why this website and all the content I have created, and will create in the future, exists. I have decided I needed to give some sort of a final meaning, or purpose, to all the years spent in depression or mania. I needed to use this new sense of normality as fuel for my future art. Because I believe with the help of it I will not only transcend the situation, but I could also integrate all my past and future experiences into something coherent and meaningful.
And then again, my pursuit could help so many others that go through similar situations and maybe move a bit the public perception into avoiding their stigmatization. I know I had my share of it, and still go through life having to face it every day. So I wish by visiting my site you could get a deeper understanding of the people that sometimes stand behind so many of the beautiful things you surround yourself without even knowing
PAUL SELING 