BACKSTAGE. Unofficial. [ An event ARTHUB ] People are talking so much and so often about art, that it has become a kind of label fitting any possible field. The notion has so much distinction and prestige, that it crowns any professional achievement, from cookery to bricklaying, from the strategy of a football trainer to the efortless driving of a taxi driver. All can be explained by its identification with proofs of professional excellence, craftsmanship and talent, of highest creativity. It is no longer a praising appreciation, but a bow to excellence. It is the absolute superlative, the unmeasurable height, the greatest peak. However, the field which has promoted it is not sure anymore about the criteria of its applicability. Contemporary visual art denies aligning the values according to such data, and it does so in a rather hostile manner when it comes to painting. Thus, it sanctions artists claiming their talent inherited genetically or their skill gained through hard work because they no longer represent virtues, and their compulsive use is regarded as a self-dissoluting abuse. More than ever, people are now talking about the mediation of the artistic act, about the paths to the autonomous work of art, emphasising that the act of creation is not, and should not be an opportunity for narcissistic jubilation and self-referentiality. One should weigh carefully this whirling, vertigo-like phenomenon, triggered by this common sense truth generating the artistic life occurring in (mainly private) art galleries from all main cultural centres in Romania, such as București, Cluj, Iași or Timișoara. Space has been found for a few fringe cases, when originalitaty, as ultimate expression of authentic creativity, is substituted by the original expression of an abjuration. The beauty has been replaced by the genuine. When it comes down to painting, a defensive reflex as well as a rapid need for assimilation make young artists use a type of casual-unsightly expression, less vulnerable to professional criticism. That is why the practice of traditional (easel) painting becomes obsolete. Anyway, it is hard to classify it within the great and many-sided hierarchy of values specific to contemporary art. Having said that, it is highly unlikely that a few educated people, totally immersed in non-artistic professions, would ever retreat on an island to completely dedicate themselves to such an enterprise whose efforts do not pay off. However, in the very heart of Brașov, in its historical centre, a perfectly homogenous group of artists has been bravely exploring the possibilities of contemporary art for more than a year. Unlike ordinary artists, conceitedly involved in the act of creation, the ones from the ArtHub workshop are connected to art in form of humility. This explains unambiguously (beyond the character and moral identity of any particular artist) the passability and formability before the various themes they collectively put forward in a personal or team project, as well as their fresh, unprejudiced approach. The group has been doing an outstanding team work, with every participant losing and finding one’s self. The works selected for their exibition display proofs of the artists’ resistance to everyday reality they critically observed, both detaching themselves from it, as well as perfectly assimilating it. BACKSTAGE. Unofficial Exibition is an invitation to a patient exploration among easels (now aligned as an installation) and schetches (on canvas, paper and wood) exposed with no commercial agenda, yet with a strong recommendation for the audience to visually grasp the incipient artistic conscience (amazingly well structure at times), rather than performance and craftmanship. Presenting the workshop in its filtered out fashion is a reflection of the metamorphosis undergrone by its attendees, of the in-between status of the butterfly emerging from its crhysalis. Their yearnings gradually become legitimate. This exhibition/open workshop is just a temporary, early stage in a series of countless, ever more articulate, developments.