Nicolae Comanescu | dust 2 dust

"Art seems to employ a myriad of textures and materials – and even no materials at all – in order to express itself. Yet there is something which has been used from the very start of this thing called art, when our cave-dwelling ancestors began leaving their spiritual mark on this world. I am talking about dust, about dirt, earth, humus. The Neolithic "artist" imprinted his thought firstly and foremost by using charcoal and various types of dust, preferably of the reddish variety. The results are stunning even nowadays, after millennia and millennia. And they are born out of one of the most elemental materials available to humankind, something that just lies around in every corner and, indeed, everywhere one cares to look. [...] The art with dust I would like to talk about is the sort of art that is really connected to people. We can add to this small but nevertheless illustrious gallery our own Nicolae Comanescu, the painter of Romanian disconnected realities."

"The "Dust 2.0" series goes one step further in showing us the darker, even more serious side of Nicolae Comanescu, and this is more than likely aided by restricting the chromatics to various shades of dust. But we have to observe another preoccupation in the artist's mid. These new works depicting the neighbourhood of Berceni literally convey the life of the artist, and I would make so bold as to compare them to Utrillo's Montmartre paintings. What we see is the artist's immediate environment, the places where he spends a great deal of his time, and where some of inspiration comes from.[...] I think that Nicolae is the first Romanian artist to treat this underrated medium with the respect it deserves. One of the basest things in life, dirt, has been elevated to the rank of artistic endeavour. The metaphor-lover would go on to say that by this act, the artist has emphasised the transitoriness of life, and that all we are is dust in the wind and from dust we come and to dust we shall return, or even that life is dirt." (by Mihai Risnoveanu)

Galeria 26 / OTA
Opening: 28 Nov / 19.30