appeared in “Vitraliu”, “George Apostu” International Cultural Centre’s periodical, Bacau, year XV, No. 3-4 (24) June 2006
The organizers’ inspired fervour joined two modalities of artistic expression of modernity worthy of select saloons of the great spiritual capitals. Though conceived as distinct cultural entities, Dragos Burlacu’s painting exhibition (eruditely and in the same time, extremely warmly varnished by critic Valentin Ciuca), as well as the performance on Matei Visniec’s text, decomposed theatre, share inspiration, novelty and freshness of youth and give the certitude of profound talents with solid aesthetic fundaments.
Dragos Burlacu’s works have no title – how can we call a dream otherwise than a dream? Anyway, such images couldn’t have anything else but labels with many words. A painting could be named “The Girl in the Bathroom Sectioned by the Break-up Nightmare, Watched through a Keyhole by the Man Who Loves Her”. Another label could be “Sad Man in the Tender Moment of the Day”. The exercise of naming could go on with “Free Your Mind, You Asshole!” or “The Hideous Face of the Man in Love, but Misunderstood, in Three Coloured Exemplars”.
In the former bowling alley of the communist party on the lakeside in Bacau, collages of the bizarre are imprinted on the retina like some windows through which fragments of reality emerge on ironically coloured canvas, energetically brushed with paint tears negligently dripping from a confidential space. It’s a delight of sensual, exciting nonconformity, like in pop art. Instead of seeing Marilyn Monroe in the colouristic hypostases suggested by Andy Warhol, you discover Da Vinci’s Gioconda in Dragos Burlacu’s split vision. Why not? On cymae hang flashes of red fleshy lips, a young woman’s perfect thighs, a man’s naturalistic eyebrow and temple expressed on a square metre of canvas, obsessions of anatomic detail, but also the ridiculous high technology display on which the sketch of a failed love thrones derisively. From the left sided wall, the monstrous macrocephalus, in three hypostases of a cosmic wonder with exophthalmic eyes, emits compassion.
Mysterious and attractive, many organized in polyptych in which happiness is depicted in white and black, like in an unforgivable sentence of destiny which does not accept compromise, the paintings present in the INSOMNIA exhibition are tender and fascinating like a passion repeated in the orphic subconscious, without finding its correspondent in reality, in the daylight.
Even in the abstract images of the insomnias it is easy to recognize the harsh, convulsive preoccupation for the detail of life, which is tempting and stirs passions. Irreparably broken dreams in a world in which happiness is divided parsimoniously, accidentally and unfairly. The artist doesn’t seem willing to confess himself wholly to the onlooker. He subjugates the eye to some unusual visual experiences, unveiling just a part of reality, and that one deformed, but, due to that, the more exciting. From one-coloured voyeuristic slits real life elements mix with the explosive effect of the colours of a dream broken by existential sleeplessness. Precise, vigorous coughs almost photographically fix anatomic elements on huge canvas, in a touching affective tension. We find ourselves within a space where we are allowed to see the imperfection of juvenile acne on a forehead full of sweat because of God knows what nightmare fears, and the carious teeth of a feminine character actually sensual, but deformed by an unknown wonder.
The artist’s unmistakable brand is defined by unexpected inspiring motifs, if they were not completely lacking in evolutionary technical means, from the firm spontaneity of contours to the complexity of some forms in which the lyricism of impressionism insinuatingly combines with the image of sensualism which you feel vibrating in the dull black and white photo of a girl’s body with its morphology modified because of the hotness of passion. The volumes of colour are composed of a game in which optimism is well tempered by the precise graphic that sends to the exotic territories of Hocusai’s frames.
INSOMNIA is a provocative game forcing your memory to remount, from frames that lie somewhere in the brains, unnoticed, the syndrome of solitude. Something that, though lived for so many times, remains unseen.