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Maria Magdalena Crisan
Val Manescu
Dan Popescu
Simona Nastac
Cosmin Nasui
Simona Nastac
Zoltan Bela / Dragos Burlacu
Lucidity like a drama
Vitraliu, periodical magazine of the International Cultural Centre “George Apostu”, Bacau, nr. 3-4/June 2006
Many of our untreatable prejudices concerning a possible ethical cecity of the young generation are connected to their so-called lack of involvement in the social aspect of life and an attitude paradoxically based on lack of attitude. This is totally false. Dragos Burlacu, the exhibitor from the Cultural Centre “George Apostu”, right on Europe’s Day, identifies with the problems of the internet generation, but has a lucidity which differentiates him through thinking and artistic expression. The problem is, naturally, far more complex and treating it with sentences complicates things even more. Maturity does not need miscarried experiences on and on, but only solitary quests connected to the level of expectations and to the ability to define as a presence. Thus, the challenges of the immediate become acceptable, and the collateral victims, fewer. In order to get detached from the zone of the evil, first you have to be aware of it and name it. Once named, the danger can be controlled. Dragos Burlacu named this perfidious danger INSOMNIA.
Considered by Konrad Lorenz, the great expert in ethology, Nobel Prize winner, as one of the deadly sins of civilized humanity, the generation gap encourages both disputes and prejudices. Youngsters dream forward, elders dream backward, different expectations and life options, values. Models encourage moods of permanent disputes. The middle-aged or elderly people plead for their life experience, the traumas they’ve been through, and their feats; whereas the others, the youngsters, complain that they don’t have any possibility to show what they’re capable of. Too often do we suspect youth of immaturity, of lack of interest for a real social integration, in other words, of not having established an ideal in life. We sometimes only reduce their social presence to good fun, to violent disputes of the elderly ones and, generally, to the abandon of the ideals which brought the glory of the preceding generations. History repeats and nobody admits that each generation passed through similar experiences. They forget that they entered this life as young insurgents and protesters and got out of it as true conservatives.
Manipulated by multiple prejudices, both sides don’t take their time to analyze more thoroughly. Each generation has the right to ask and find out answers, to express themselves within the limits of a time which is defined spiritually. Exclusive generalizations don’t solve the old-world problem whatsoever. The middle-aged or elderly people don’t understand the youngsters anymore, and the latter globally question everything that the previous generation ever achieved. The solutions of a dialogue often prove to be too little tempting. The result is pretty obvious.
Recently, an artist who detaches himself from the great lesson of his teacher, Theodor Moraru, surprised us by contradicting the previous observations through his social attitude and artistic feats. In his exhibition, Dragos Burlacu glosses on insomnia. No sleep of reason, which, as we all know, gives birth to monsters; on the contrary, there is a prolonged wakeful state of lucidity. The polemic note of his great compositions directs our attention to the obvious benefits of modern hyper communication, through which time and space are compressed, as well as the presumed adjacent disadvantages of media culture and computer excesses. Rooted in front of the computer, the modern man willingly lets himself be manipulated by the sophisticated visual proposals, where the video image replaces the book and the word. The media by-products make capital out of the instinctual, the lack of value, and people consume them easily, assured by the authority of the television. His characters, youngsters in search of an identity, have established their options: the internet café, the bathroom and the kitchen; here, in this limited space, they consume their daily existence, this is the place where revolts or love games reduced to sex practice occur.
The painter shows his worries about the loss of humanity and his gesture has the role of awakening.
The expressionism of the attitude perfectly suits the nonconformist solutions of expression, where the surface of the painted panels is traversed by firm, virile, hopeless brushes. Dystrophic children, women alienated from their own femininity, apathetic men or just drug addicts populate the respective spaces, where only the freedom of failure remains valid. The collages with various photos inserted in paintings evoke the same tendency of replacing the derisory. The painter’s strictly technical application harmonizes with a not so flattering vision, whereas his morality depends on his talent and analytical lucidity. We don’t find any answers and I don’t think the artist intended to.
The artist Dragos Burlacu only formulated hypotheses from the perspective of art, in a world in which, for the sake of communication, we all talk at once and nobody listens – who will answer? Behind the rhetorical question there is, actually, a lucidity always in alert. Through questions we search for solutions, through artistic gestures we get close to them…
Vitraliu, periodical magazine of the International Cultural Centre “George Apostu”, Bacau, nr. 3-4/June 2006
Many of our untreatable prejudices concerning a possible ethical cecity of the young generation are connected to their so-called lack of involvement in the social aspect of life and an attitude paradoxically based on lack of attitude. This is totally false. Dragos Burlacu, the exhibitor from the Cultural Centre “George Apostu”, right on Europe’s Day, identifies with the problems of the internet generation, but has a lucidity which differentiates him through thinking and artistic expression. The problem is, naturally, far more complex and treating it with sentences complicates things even more. Maturity does not need miscarried experiences on and on, but only solitary quests connected to the level of expectations and to the ability to define as a presence. Thus, the challenges of the immediate become acceptable, and the collateral victims, fewer. In order to get detached from the zone of the evil, first you have to be aware of it and name it. Once named, the danger can be controlled. Dragos Burlacu named this perfidious danger INSOMNIA.
Considered by Konrad Lorenz, the great expert in ethology, Nobel Prize winner, as one of the deadly sins of civilized humanity, the generation gap encourages both disputes and prejudices. Youngsters dream forward, elders dream backward, different expectations and life options, values. Models encourage moods of permanent disputes. The middle-aged or elderly people plead for their life experience, the traumas they’ve been through, and their feats; whereas the others, the youngsters, complain that they don’t have any possibility to show what they’re capable of. Too often do we suspect youth of immaturity, of lack of interest for a real social integration, in other words, of not having established an ideal in life. We sometimes only reduce their social presence to good fun, to violent disputes of the elderly ones and, generally, to the abandon of the ideals which brought the glory of the preceding generations. History repeats and nobody admits that each generation passed through similar experiences. They forget that they entered this life as young insurgents and protesters and got out of it as true conservatives.
Manipulated by multiple prejudices, both sides don’t take their time to analyze more thoroughly. Each generation has the right to ask and find out answers, to express themselves within the limits of a time which is defined spiritually. Exclusive generalizations don’t solve the old-world problem whatsoever. The middle-aged or elderly people don’t understand the youngsters anymore, and the latter globally question everything that the previous generation ever achieved. The solutions of a dialogue often prove to be too little tempting. The result is pretty obvious.
Recently, an artist who detaches himself from the great lesson of his teacher, Theodor Moraru, surprised us by contradicting the previous observations through his social attitude and artistic feats. In his exhibition, Dragos Burlacu glosses on insomnia. No sleep of reason, which, as we all know, gives birth to monsters; on the contrary, there is a prolonged wakeful state of lucidity. The polemic note of his great compositions directs our attention to the obvious benefits of modern hyper communication, through which time and space are compressed, as well as the presumed adjacent disadvantages of media culture and computer excesses. Rooted in front of the computer, the modern man willingly lets himself be manipulated by the sophisticated visual proposals, where the video image replaces the book and the word. The media by-products make capital out of the instinctual, the lack of value, and people consume them easily, assured by the authority of the television. His characters, youngsters in search of an identity, have established their options: the internet café, the bathroom and the kitchen; here, in this limited space, they consume their daily existence, this is the place where revolts or love games reduced to sex practice occur.
The painter shows his worries about the loss of humanity and his gesture has the role of awakening.
The expressionism of the attitude perfectly suits the nonconformist solutions of expression, where the surface of the painted panels is traversed by firm, virile, hopeless brushes. Dystrophic children, women alienated from their own femininity, apathetic men or just drug addicts populate the respective spaces, where only the freedom of failure remains valid. The collages with various photos inserted in paintings evoke the same tendency of replacing the derisory. The painter’s strictly technical application harmonizes with a not so flattering vision, whereas his morality depends on his talent and analytical lucidity. We don’t find any answers and I don’t think the artist intended to.
The artist Dragos Burlacu only formulated hypotheses from the perspective of art, in a world in which, for the sake of communication, we all talk at once and nobody listens – who will answer? Behind the rhetorical question there is, actually, a lucidity always in alert. Through questions we search for solutions, through artistic gestures we get close to them…
© 2009 Dragos Burlacu