Primesc des întrebări asupra portretelor mele, întrebări la care mult timp nu am știut să răspund, poate pentru sună simplist să tot răspund că de fapt repet, la nesfârșit, gestul de a mă desena pe mine, gest pe care l-am făcut mai întâi la trei sau patru ani: doi ochi bulbucați într-o mare de păr negru, cu o expresie mirată și o gură micuță. Un desen care strângea în el ce am simțit mult timp despre mine în lume.
A desena sau a picta e un act de cunoaștere. A picta un portret este o meditație asupra omului, asupra sinelui, este o relație cu celălalt.
Cum aș putea explica, simplu, cuiva, că figurile extraterestre, androgine, femeile melancolice, bărbații jucăuși, sunt întrebări și meditații la infinit despre mine, lume, celălalt, și iar despre mine, toți ceilalți, ființa umană? Că există o consolare primordială în a fi capabil să desenezi doi ochi și o gură și să-l numești ”chip”, că repet la infinit gestul omului din peșteră care se desena, gestul vânătorului din paleolitic care modela figurine din pământ, gestul copilului care desenează doi ochi și o gură pentru a zice „eu”.
Multe lucruri se schimbă, interogările se ramifică și se dilată, obsesiile estetice, cromatice, fixația pe formă, devin tot mai rafinate, dar gestul, în esența lui, este același. Privirea, starea, gura, întrebarea. Într-un final, am adunat toate aceste lucrări, reprezentante din serii din ultimii patru ani, ca o mirare dar și o întrebare de care mă lovesc constant, față în față cu ființa umană, în care cred că sălășluiește atât posibilitatea îngrozitorului, cât și a miraculosului. În colecția mea de oameni imaginari, aflați în oglindă cu lumea, se află simultan potențialul binelui și răului, ambele în mod absolut. Întrebarea, cea de care nu scap, stă în acel moment de posibilitate. Oare care este momentul în care un om își ratează potențialul? Sau care este momentul în care cineva se rostogolește, ca un bulgăre de zăpadă, spre a și-l împlini?
În fața celuilalt, oricare ar fi acesta, sper să luați cu voi această meditație, spre a v-o însuși.
You were in that make-believe place
I get much too often questions regarding my portraits, questions that for a
long time I wasn’t able to give an answer to, because everything looked too
obvious for me, so I kept repeating endlessly the gesture of drawing myself,
something I first did when I was three or four years old: two wide eyes under
big dark hair, with a puzzled look and a small mouth. A drawing that
summoned in itself everything I had always felt about the world.
Drawing and painting are acts of knowledge. Painting a portrait is a
meditation upon humanity and oneself, it is a means to get to know the Other.
How could I explain, simply, that my weird or androgynous figures, the
melancholiac women, the playful men, are infinite questions and meditations
upon myself, the world, the other, and again upon myself, and all the others, on
the human being?
That there is a primordial consolation in being capable to draw two eyes
and a mouth and call it a “face”, that thus I keep repeating the gesture of the
caveman who was scratching his own outline on a wall, or of the hunter from
the Paleolithic, modeling his figures out of mud, the gesture of the child who
forever is drawing two eyes and a mouth and calls that: “I”.
Many things change, interrogations blossom and expand like branches,
while aesthetical or chromatic obsessions, fixations with form, become more
raffinate, but still – the gesture in its essence remains the same. The gaze, the
mood, the mouth, the perplexity. In the end, I gathered these works, finding
them representative for my work during the past four years, gathering them
together as an answer to my own astonishment, but also to a question that
frequently puzzles me in meeting the human being, in which I believe converge
the miraculous, as well as the horrendous.
In my collection of imaginary people, who function as a mirror to the
world, you will always find both the potential for good and for evil. The
questions haunts is the essence of the point of shifting, of change from the one
to the other. How can we say when someone misses the realization of his own
being? Or how can we define the moment when someone starts rolling, like a
snowball, starting the avalanche that will make that happen?
Confronted with the Other, whoever she/he/it might be, I hope you will not
stagger, but that you will take this meditation with you and make it your own.
I get much too often questions regarding my portraits, questions that for a
long time I wasn’t able to give an answer to, because everything looked too
obvious for me, so I kept repeating endlessly the gesture of drawing myself,
something I first did when I was three or four years old: two wide eyes under
big dark hair, with a puzzled look and a small mouth. A drawing that
summoned in itself everything I had always felt about the world.
Drawing and painting are acts of knowledge. Painting a portrait is a
meditation upon humanity and oneself, it is a means to get to know the Other.
How could I explain, simply, that my weird or androgynous figures, the
melancholiac women, the playful men, are infinite questions and meditations
upon myself, the world, the other, and again upon myself, and all the others, on
the human being?
That there is a primordial consolation in being capable to draw two eyes
and a mouth and call it a “face”, that thus I keep repeating the gesture of the
caveman who was scratching his own outline on a wall, or of the hunter from
the Paleolithic, modeling his figures out of mud, the gesture of the child who
forever is drawing two eyes and a mouth and calls that: “I”.
Many things change, interrogations blossom and expand like branches,
while aesthetical or chromatic obsessions, fixations with form, become more
raffinate, but still – the gesture in its essence remains the same. The gaze, the
mood, the mouth, the perplexity. In the end, I gathered these works, finding
them representative for my work during the past four years, gathering them
together as an answer to my own astonishment, but also to a question that
frequently puzzles me in meeting the human being, in which I believe converge
the miraculous, as well as the horrendous.
In my collection of imaginary people, who function as a mirror to the
world, you will always find both the potential for good and for evil. The
questions haunts is the essence of the point of shifting, of change from the one
to the other. How can we say when someone misses the realization of his own
being? Or how can we define the moment when someone starts rolling, like a
snowball, starting the avalanche that will make that happen?
Confronted with the Other, whoever she/he/it might be, I hope you will not
stagger, but that you will take this meditation with you and make it your own.
Photo credits: Toma Negulici/ Alexandru Busuioceanu