Fragments is an ongoing line of work in the studio, a series that speaks of many things at once, in dialogue with the project Pământeşti as well as with more recent concerns. These are pieces where the focus lies outside the composition itself: more than the figure, what interests me is what escapes the viewer’s gaze. Hence the violent ruptures of framing, the tension within what is represented. As in the world, reality remains ultimately ungraspable.
When I present these works and do not wish to reveal what truly inspired them, I turn to myths: the dream of Ariadne, or the story of Selene and Endymion. The first tells of a heroine who, despite helping the hero (Theseus), is abandoned on an island, where a dream envelops her into a new stage of life. The second, Selene, goddess of the Moon, and Endymion, the shepherd condemned to eternal sleep, has served me to express aspects of my own story: the suicide of my partner, and myself, staying and fleeing at once, like Selene, in the face of an irrevocable absence.
Whether to represent, or to withhold, the pain of suffering remains for me an open question. I choose to approach painting with a sense of responsibility towards the viewer, and also towards my future self.