Mirela Moscu’s first solo exhibiton at SUPRAINFINIT pulls together new and existing body of works that creates a mesh of fantasies, folkloric symbols and memories to transform the space of the gallery into an in-between (artistic) realm.
Drawn from her training in traditional figurative painting, this exhibition highlights an in-depth series of guache paintings on paper alongside large canvases that coagulate her intense and visceral pace of working. As elements iterate and the colour palette prevails consistently, an unusual blend of the uncanny and the familiar arises. The brush strokes are simple, articulate and dominated by an instinctual process. The paintings emanate a powerful balance between a narrative of depicted components and unknown gestures of perception disruption.
Often a leitmotiv in her practice, the forest landscape, a familiar scenery during her childhood, is ubiquitous in her work today. Brought as a context in almost every single painting, the dense vegetation of the forest becomes a place of encounter for all the human and more abstract presences designated. Hypnotic and hidden eyes gaze towards the viewer. And the viewer gazes back. Human silhouettes and figures are scattered against the intense greens in seeking to intertwine worlds of reality and fantasy, moments of closure and distance, solitude and togetherness. In a way, the artist forges ”the forest of things and signs"* whereby the viewer is invited to venture, to observe and build its own narrative and truth. Moscu’s paintings are at once unforeseeable and familiarly enchanting. The fine line between the human and the animal as well as the green and the blue unveil the artist’s passion for the potential inscribed in the interconnected moment of dawn and dusk. A popular saying in Romania claims that this precise moment of the day is magical and thus demons and forces are stronger. This moment is called the ”wolf hour” in the Swedish folklore, the wolf also being a symbol of solitude and change.
"Sky-like hope" brings together paintings that become a metaphor for feelings of uncertainty, transition and in-betweenness. The crisp and playful hues of greens and blues, alongside the human-animal beings, enable a sense of hope and instinct that sit together with differing life turmoils, narratives and encounters.
*Ranciere, Jacques, The Ignorant Schoolmaster (California: Stanford University Press, 1991)
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