Ciprian Muresan lives and works in Cluj and belongs to the generation of the post-Communist regime and is, in a post- conceptual manner, preoccupied with the historical and political fallout of his country, Romania. Muresan recently presented at Wilkinson Gallery (2015) three large, double- sided pencil drawings depicting three volumes of the Akira series Manga comic book. The Akira series, set in a post- apocalyptic Tokyo, comprises of six volumes and was written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo.

Social isolation, corruption and power are all themes that are expressed in the Akira series. Thinking about this, we begin to understand Muresan’s attraction to Ottomo’s work. Not only is Ottomo’s illustration of the Akira series considered groundbreaking to the manga form as a whole, it was also one of the first manga works to be recognised in the Western world and translated into English. In the post-Communist period of political and economic transition that Muresan lived through, it seems that Ottomo’s work posed the worst-case scenario of all the issues that culminated in the 1980s.

Much of Muresan’s work deals with the re-contextualisation of social, historical and cultural references. The literary reference of Ottomo’s work is very fitting in expressing Muresan’s childhood experiences, and the re- contextualisation of the Akira series in his newly created drawings brings a new and deeply personal aspect to their meaning.