M y first encounter with Marius Bercea's work occurred in the summer of 2024 at the This Side of Paradise exhibition organised by the Art Encounters Foundation in Timisoara, Romania. I was instantly mesmerised by his exuberant yet subtle way of interpreting reality. Marius Bercea does not simply create contemporary art. He builds intricate universes on the canvas based on his life experience in two very different worlds, within two different temporalities-early capitalist Romania and the contemporary western coast of the United States. Mixing film, literary, and historical references, his paintings are rich in what Hall (1989, 106-11) calls "high context" elements, making viewers his cross-cultural voyage accomplices. Marius Bercea's artistic universe unveils antagonistic realities contoured in intense colour contrasts, revealing the flagrant paradoxes of early capitalist and contemporary lifestyles. His paintings expose the fragility of liberal democracy in post-communist societies. Bercea overlaps past, present, and future in realist and surrealist representations, giving hints on previous and current societal ethical concerns. In paintings depicting domestic scenes, city snapshots, or portraits, Bercea combines country history, personal memories, and present impressions, alternating utopian and dystopian scenarios. His paintings target fundamental societal ethical challenges such as poverty, rights inequality, misinformation, and consumerism. Bercea has a striking take on time as he manages to express duration within different time frames. His paintings portray the fading memories of historical events that have enormous consequences on the present and can drastically influence the future. In this article, I will focus on paintings that unveil ethical dilemmas across all time dimensions.

Drawing on diffusion of innovation theory, this cross-national study examines the association between cultural dimensions and artificial intelligence (AI) capability on a 78-country sample. This cross-country, worldwide approach enables a more comprehensive understanding of differences in cross-national AI capability, providing cultural explanations for a new perspective on the diffusion of novel technologies. Our main findings reveal that individualism demonstrates the most stable positive association across model specifications. Uncertainty avoidance and motivation towards achievement and success are significant in the baseline SEM, but the results become sensitive after adding country-level control variables. Long-term orientation is significant in some OLS models but not in the baseline SEM. Power distance and indulgence are not supported in the baseline SEM. Results suggest that cultural values should be considered alongside economic, infrastructural, and regional conditions when analyzing cross-national differences in AI capability. Our findings provide a contextual perspective for policymakers and managers that are developing strategies for achieving competitive advantage. Considering the turbulence of the business and social environments, we argue that cultural adaptive capabilities are essential for global competitiveness.