Seen by the eyes of a stranger who can’t help but get involved, the figures of humans hang and exceed or reach to the edges of the frames of paintings; mysterious figures, obvious figures, poetic or distant figures centered or set on the stage of triptych-like compositions are simple in their essence, and that simplicity is underlining the clear message of complexity and value of human life.
I could see it not only in photographs taken from the show but in the details of each painting, I found the world of true life and life meaningful to the fullest extent, even in portraying some ordinary or meaningless ambience where one may dwell or stray. In these fifteen paintings that resemble the trees from the primordial garden – although each of them may stand as a jungle of vibrant emotions echoing with music, noise, tremor and sometimes even with a silence – one may see the art from the cave abreast with the urban pictorial definition of humanity today.
One may experience the shamanic dance of healing or leaving the wounds speak for themselves. One may hear music from the instruments that seem lively and yet unanchored in any particular corner of the street, like coming from everywhere, from any spot of the globe to get poured into our senses. One may hear the comments on the art that is shocking or inappropriate, provoking or straying from the mainstreams of artistic expression or composition. These paintings do not carry any special experiment, but as a whole they appear to be a huge experiment in life, sometimes as simple as a human touch. They are all extensively involving, as someone said, stirring all our senses at the same time.
Similarly, the artist appears as mysterious as a child of a naïve soul of creation or a master of wise vision and depth. There are things obviously incorporated to draw our attention to some detail, fragments of reality caught on the spot and served on the plate or stuck to the body of the painting itself. All these captivating details scattered on the paintings – some of them coins, train tickets, playing cards, and cigarettes – or else the painting as a whole. There is a feeling of reliability and canon in this art, its solidity, a style to easily fill large formats such as heavy boards, doors, or wood panels. All together, they can resemble a cathedral with the icons of life and pain or warning on its walls, voice and music filling it, pertaining not to past, history and death and not to future, but to the present moment brimming with life.
This art is powerful and strikingly persuasive in bringing its point. Humanity. Whatever connotation that word may have for anyone. Humanity as a whole, as an individual who could never be known but also never forgotten once after seeing him or her, humanity as emotional expression of faith, hopelessness and belief at the same time. Humanity as love for other human beings – as a means of pulling them out of anonymity of suffering.
This art might be seen as engaged and applied as an urgent message for all people to turn to one another, to reach and touch each other’s hands and connect with emotions in some endeavor that takes all of humanity to perform to the fullest. This art radiates the hope that it is not an impossible task.
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