The sea, the landscape behind the eye.
Gili Mocanu (b. 1971) returns with an exhibition in his hometown. Every artist has, behind the eye, a paideuma of their own that structures their style. It is a formative image, the atmosphere of an existential matrix. For Gili, this determining landscape is the sea. A simple division between open-above and closed-below, plus the straight line as caesura. It is the place where philosophical reverie becomes possible, where one lets go of life’s baggage, the view before which the sublime settles in the soul like a worm in rotten flesh.
Facing the boundless sea you can develop an ontology of the elements; here at least two appear in all their splendour, water and air. Here too you can find a key to any hyper-artificial urban existential cipher. Though a mocan, a highland shepherd, by ancestry, Gili gave up the undulating Wallachian space for the straight line. He keeps the warm, bitter Romanian fatalism and brings it to the sea, where it can also give answers, not only lead to Mioritic suicides. (Dan Popescu)
Thanks to: Doina Păuleanu, MARe, Tudor and Gianina Grecu, Simina Oprescu, Matei Câlțea, Alexandru Paul, Daniel Ștefănică.
On 8 August 2017, Gili Mocanu returned to his hometown with an exhibition at the Constanța Art Museum.
In Dan Popescu’s text, the seascape, a simple division between open-above and closed-below with a straight line as caesura, is the formative image that structures his style. Facing the sea, the warm, bitter Romanian fatalism Gili keeps can also find answers.
