Meet The Artist
Meet the Artist: Exploring the World of Hyperrealism with Artist Sinziana Iordache a.k.a. @SinzianaIordache
This Toronto-based artist creates incredibly detailed watch portraits using just a pencil.
By Rhonda Riche
Editor-At-Large
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then hyperrealist art must be worth a million more. An offshoot of the lifelike images typically seen in photorealist art (in which a photographic image is reproduced as realistically as possible in another medium), hyperrealists use photos more as a reference to create drawings, paintings, and sculptures that at first resemble high-resolution images but are, in actuality, more imaginative and intense than the photo reference.
The genre started in the 1970s. Its best-known artists include sculptors Carole Feuerman and Duane Hanson and painter Chuck Close. All of these artists are known for their highly detailed portraits or sculptures. The subjects are rendered in such detail that the viewer is immediately tempted to start a conversation.
Toronto-based artist Sinziana Iordache is keeping the spirit of these artists alive with her intricate pencil drawings of watches. However, instead of people, her oversized portraits are of watches.
Art & Architecture
Iordache’s interest in art and watches was instilled at an early age. Born in Romania, she began drawing at an early age. “I started with cartoons, Disney and Looney Tunes,” she told Watchonista. “Sylvester is my favourite.” The next four years of her artistic life, she focused on portraiture. But still, “Art was a subject, not a career.”
Not that she wasn’t engaged in aesthetics. She studied architecture in Romania, then, after moving to Canada in 2007, she attended Toronto Metropolitan University. After graduation, she started a successful Interior design business (which she still runs). Everything was moving forward nicely.
Then, in 2015, Iordache felt the urge to start drawing again. She did a few portraits of people, but it didn’t feel quite right. Then, while visiting Dubai, she had an epiphany. “I walked into MB&F’s M.A.D.Gallery and realized that my love for architecture and art could be combined,” she explained. “It wasn’t necessarily a lightbulb moment, but it was aspirational.”
Grand Complications
We first became aware of Iordache’s art through Instagram (her handle is @sinzianaiordache). One of the things that draws all of us to watches is how they are little mechanisms brought to life on the wrist. Even when viewed on the tiny screen of a cellphone, one sensed a liveliness in her images.
“One of my professors sat me down and said, ‘You have to be careful with hyperrealism. It can look soulless.’ ” But the things that drive her vision also populate her art with humanity. “My father loved watches and cars, so there’s a bit of an homage to him,” she added. The structure of a watch also ties into her love of architecture.
Her first big project was an oversized, skeletonized Vacheron Constantin Metiers d’Art. The size of the drawing and the tension between the surface textures of the graphite and paper can’t help but invite the viewer deeper into the watch. One can almost imagine walking around and living in it.
Connections
For Iordache, listening is as important as seeing. Her favorite watch is a Christopher Ward C63 Sealander, which she was gifted by her family: “Outside of my father, no one in my family is a watch person, but they listened to my ramblings and showed that they do listen.”
As a portrait artist, Iordache’s images also possess a bespoke quality. On her website, sinzianaiordache.com, Iordache writes, “Life isn’t always about the smooth paths, and that goes double for my art.”
“Drawings are technical, but the commission process is very personal,” she explained to Watchonista. “I try to make sure that shows in the finished piece.”
Working with collectors also presents technical challenges – puzzles that Iordache is happy to solve. “One collector wanted the lume to come through in the drawing,” continued Iordache. “At first, it seemed like a crazy request, but he trusted me enough to try. How could I say no?”
Her favorite challenge (so far) was capturing the four-sided Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica 185. “Drawing is about the details. The more complicated a watch is, the more exciting it is,” she said. Then there’s the story of the actual drawing process itself.
Iordache’s images generally take about 60 hours to complete, not counting time spent investigating the individual timepiece: “It took a lot of research to understand how all four faces related to each other,” she added. Thus, as an Easter Egg for each artwork, she will set the time or date of each watch to the minute that her pencil first hits the paper.
Watch On Your Wall
A quick art history nerd note: Portraiture has also been used to inventory the sitter’s beloved belongings. Moreover, the old masters often suggested a sitter’s profession or interests by including possessions and attributes that helped characterize them. While Iordache’s subject matter is stripped down to one object, it can still convey its owner’s passions.
Case in point, one client remarked that the movement of his A. Lange & Söhne Double Split was so beautiful that he wished he could wear it with the caseback facing out. With his permission, Iardache drew it just that way, flipping the band in the image so it looked as if this was the way he always wore it.
For those of us who don’t have a Lange budget, Iordache also sells giclee prints of her work on her website. We even recently received a reproduction of a drawing of the Fears Brunswick, created in collaboration with the Vancouver Timepiece Show.
While the time-only Brunswick feels like the complete opposite of the skeletonized Double Split, the timepiece’s lovely details – its openwork hands, vintage fonts, and the way the light hits the knurled crown – also sum up the spirit of her work. “People ask, ‘Why draw something when you can take a picture?’ But for me, it’s about the love of craftsmanship,” she said. “The finished work is the sum of all the elements.”
To learn more, check out Sinziana Iordache’s website or Instagram page, @SinzianaIordache.