Carmen Marin

Carmen Marin (b. 1977, Constanța, Romania) is an internationally recognized visual artist who masterfully blends figuration, abstraction, and phenomenological perception into a unique, profound, and contemporary pictorial language. Based between Bucharest and New York, she works at the intersection of modern and contemporary art, proposing a visual discourse that elevates absence into presence, and transience into permanence.

Education and formation

Carmen graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Painting Department in 2000, where she studied under the renowned Romanian artist Ștefan Câlția.

She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Arts, earned in 2024 from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, under the supervision of Professor Marilena Preda Sânc.

Her academic trajectory reflects both rigorous training and critical engagement with postmodern visual culture, which continues to shape her expanded studio practice.

Collectors

Carmen Marin’s works are part of major private and institutional collections across Europe and North America — including Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine, Canada, and the United States — reflecting the universal resonance of her visual sensibility.

Among the most prominent collectors who have supported her work are Sean Scully and Liliane Tomasko, Eileen S. Kaminsky (ESKFF), Kitty and Tom Stoner (Art for the Journey), actor Will Smith, Tim Burton, filmmaker and visual art collector, alongside members of royal families, cultural diplomats, and international musicians such as the Bocelli family, Enrique Iglesias and Beyonce.

  

Exhibitions

Recent exhibitions and institutional collaborations have played a central role in shaping her artistic path. She participated in Romania’s national project at the London Design Biennale (2025), held at Somerset House, where her contribution aligned visual art with international design and cross-disciplinary research.

Her solo exhibition Beyond the Ordinary, curated by Porfirio Rodriguez, was presented at WIN Gallery Bucharest in October 2024 and later travelled to Marbella, Spain, in collaboration with the Romanian Consulate in Seville and the City of Marbella.
The project expanded her presence within the Spanish-speaking cultural world and affirmed her position within international cultural diplomacy initiatives.

At the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, her 2024 solo show Absences explored the invisible as poetic
reality, highlighting themes of silence, fragility, and the presence of absence. The exhibition is officially listed in ArtFacts. Her 2023
exhibition Toward Primordiality, curated by Vladimir Bulat and Raphy Sarkissian, was presented at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Chișinău and is likewise documented in international registries.

In 2021, Marin held her first institutional solo show in Romania — Dor — at the Țării Crișurilor Museum in Oradea. The exhibition was a deeply introspective and culturally rooted reflection on exile, longing, and emotional memory. In 2023, a selection of her works was shown at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, fostering dialogue with emerging global voices.

Work

Her visual discourse is shaped by an aesthetic of ‘absent presence,’ echoing Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological view in L’Oeil et l’Esprit, where perception becomes a form of touch and visibility is imbued with the unseen. In this context, color becomes memory, and the artwork is less a depiction than a resonance.

Recurring themes such as exile, fragility, silence, and mnemonic presence are embodied through subtle chromatic fields, atmospheric composition, and highly intentional absences. Her work resists spectacle and instead proposes duration, contemplation, and interiority as forms of visual resistance.

The significance of Carmen Marin’s practice for contemporary museum collections lies in several key aspects:
1. A transnational reception and collector base that bridges visual cultures and disciplines.
2. Relevance to the current cultural climate — her work offers a poetic and emotional response to themes of displacement, introspection, and fragility.
3. Formal consistency and intellectual depth — her methodology is grounded in sustained research and curatorial engagement.

Carmen Marin belongs to a rare category of artists who do not merely depict, but shape aesthetic conditions for presence, perception, and poetic inhabitation. Her works invite museums to become more than repositories — to become environments for emotional and philosophical encounter.

Awards & Recognitions

2024 Artfacts – Top 100.000 artists global
2004 International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland – The Olympic Sport and Art Contest Prize in Graphic Works,

Solo Exhibitions
October 2025 – Trump International Tower Chicago (USA)
October 2025 – Cook County Treasurer, Illinois (USA)
2024 Carmen Marin: Absences, National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania. Learn more.
2024 Carmen Marin: Beyond the Ordinary, WIN Gallery, Bucharest, Romania and Marbella, Spain. Learn more.
2023 The Path, The Romanian Culture Institute, ICR, Romania, an exhibition in cooperation with Art Safari, New York
2023 Carmen Marin: Toward Primordiality, The National Museum of Fine Arts in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova. Curated by Vladimir Bulat. April 27—April 30.
2021—2022 “DOR/DESIRE,” midcareer retrospective at Țării Crișurilor Museum, Oradea, Bihor, Romania
2019 Art Fair, Aspen, Colorado, USA
2019 Rotenberg-Uzunov Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2019 The National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău, Republic of Moldova
2018 Renaissance Art Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2017 Dix Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2014 Dix Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2014 Magheru One, Bucharest, Romania
2013 Carol Parc Hotel, Bucharest, Romania
2012 Galleri Storck, Oslo, Norway
2009 Dix Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2009 La Baule, France
2008 Carol Parc Hotel, Bucharest, Romania
2008 Costa Meloneras, Gran Canaria, Spain
2007 Irecson Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2007 Hilton Art Club, Bucharest, Romania
2006 Romanian Institute, Berlin, Germany
2005 Maarten’s Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2005 L’Institut Français, Bucharest, Romania
2004 Uart Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2003 ValHouse Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2003 Romanian Embassy, Athens, Greece
2001 UART Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2001 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Bucharest, Romania
1999 World Trade Center, Bucharest, Romania
1998 Friedrich Schiller Gallery, Bucharest, Romania

Group Exhibitions
2020 XL Space Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2019 Dix Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2019 MANA Contemporary Open House, Jersey City, NJ, USA
2013 Open House, Kiev, Ukraine
2010 World Village Festival, Helsinki, Finland 2004 World Trade Center, Bucharest, Romania
2004 Art Museum, Athens, Greece
2003 World Trade Center, Bucharest, Romania
2003 Florence Biennale International Exhibition, Florence, Italy
2002 World Trade Center, Bucharest, Romania
2002 Art Salon, Bucharest, Romania
2001 UART Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2001 The International Fair of Visual Arts, Bucharest, Romania
2000 Art Salon, Bucharest, Romania
1999 Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice, Italy
1999 MLPAT Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
1998 World Trade Center, Bucharest, Romania
1997 Timisoara Art Museum, Timisoara, Romania
1996 The National Romanian Literature Museum, Bucharest, Romania
1996 Apollo Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
1995 Metopa Gallery, Pitești, Romania