Sebastian Hosu
The selection of Sebastian Hosu’s paintings gives an insight into his impetuous and bold style. The Romanian artist’s scenes—n equal parts coarse and masterfully conceived—are partially populated with fragmented figures. To create them, Hosu does not truncate complete depictions, but conceives them from an essential gesture and reduces them to that gesture. By compressing them to a movement, a position or interaction, Hosu makes his partial figures so strong that the viewer instinctively completes and complements the image contents. He succeeds in portraying flight and fall, as well as sculptural motionlessness, and tense physicality in the few patches of colour.
The same is true of his canvas; here too, areas not essential to the scene are left bare, the empty spaces around a concrete or figural concentrate force the surroundings into the background, emphasising what is there. In this way, Hosu creates corporeality with the pasty materiality of the raised masses of paint on one hand, leaving bare canvas, an absence of pigment in other areas.
For Hosu, omission is not a simple reduction, it is a concentration on the essential. As a result, the images composed are not superficially harmonious, yet cleverly balanced. Abundance and absence complement one another convincingly, like in an ingenious sketch, summarising the idea to its key moments in anticipation of a work, by emphasising the focal points, merely hinting at the surroundings, and forming an orderly clarity.
Viewers are given a surprisingly in-depth impression of the painting process. Excitement and tumultuous colours, emotion and tension in the image content become tangible as a transmission of the artist’s energy and ambition. The visible, corporeal study in paint and canvas largely necessitates extensive formats to capture and present the artist’s gestures.
—By Tina Simon /Translated by Brendan Bleheeen
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Dr. phil. Tina Simon
Author and publicist, Leipzig
The same is true of his canvas; here too, areas not essential to the scene are left bare, the empty spaces around a concrete or figural concentrate force the surroundings into the background, emphasising what is there. In this way, Hosu creates corporeality with the pasty materiality of the raised masses of paint on one hand, leaving bare canvas, an absence of pigment in other areas.
For Hosu, omission is not a simple reduction, it is a concentration on the essential. As a result, the images composed are not superficially harmonious, yet cleverly balanced. Abundance and absence complement one another convincingly, like in an ingenious sketch, summarising the idea to its key moments in anticipation of a work, by emphasising the focal points, merely hinting at the surroundings, and forming an orderly clarity.
Viewers are given a surprisingly in-depth impression of the painting process. Excitement and tumultuous colours, emotion and tension in the image content become tangible as a transmission of the artist’s energy and ambition. The visible, corporeal study in paint and canvas largely necessitates extensive formats to capture and present the artist’s gestures.
—By Tina Simon /Translated by Brendan Bleheeen
______________
Dr. phil. Tina Simon
Author and publicist, Leipzig