Born in 1989, Romanian painter Alin Bozbiciu evokes the spirit of many great masters of the past in his canvases. His painting is full of passion, with great speed and freedom, expressing the urgency of painting in order to capture emotion.
Pieces of flesh, falls or dances of bodies, bodies clinging, embracing, whirling, fluttering… Alin Bozbiciu's painting is nothing but whirlpools and movements… "If I weren't a painter, I might be a choreographer" "The Romanian artist, who seems to be painting with a sense of urgency, was able to say this." 1Like tattered remnants or torches, these bodies appear simultaneously to fray, disintegrate, and form, oscillating between shape and formlessness, the life of the flesh and its potential putrefaction… An impression born from the rapid, unfinished brushstrokes, but also from the light, “ghostly” tones of the flesh, which sometimes seems almost bloodless. Shades of cool tones, blues, violets, and above all, whites and grays.
Torch bodies
Emerging from the maelstrom of brushstrokes, the truncated or contorted bodies carry a certain morbidity in their decay. Yet undeniably alive—for movement is life—they seem poised to dissolve. A representative of the figurative painting of the Cluj school in Romania, Bozbiciu nonetheless practices a figuration close to a certain abstraction. A highly informal figuration where the forms, as if "consumed" by the backgrounds, seem to disintegrate while simultaneously revealing the ghostly silhouettes of works from the past.
Bodies tearing each other apart and intertwining
One might think here of the emaciated faces and elongated bodies of El Greco, there, of the Massacre of the Innocents of Poussin, here, at The Gates of Hell from Rodin, and there, to Tiepolo or Géricault… “One can also recognize, in Alin Bozbiciu’s painting, traits reminiscent of his master [Cornel Brudaşcu, a tutelary figure for many Romanian artists], notably the presence of almost Mannerist bodies, which tear each other apart at the same time as they intertwine, and a certain erotic darkness.”2"
- Alin Bozbiciu paints his paintings in one day, so that the emotion is not "broken".
- Anaël Pigeat, text from the catalogue of the exhibition “Alin Bozbiciu. It is by touching the feathers of a bird that I find the way to paint the skin of humans” presented in September 2020 at the Suzanne Tarasiève Gallery.
“ALIN BOZBICIU – The Branches of the Soul”
Suzanne Tarasiève Gallery
7, rue Pastourelle, Paris 3e
Until November 25, 2023