Whoever has the curiosity to conduct an impromptu survey among friends concerning the hierarchy of the senses might not be surprised to find out the fact that sight will always take the first place. If you go even further as to inquire as to which of the senses shall be most easily discarded, then the answers will be more diverse, but sight will surely be somewhere near the bottom of the list. This happens because sight is our most faithful and seductive companion and the principal sense that guides each of us through our immersion in life. “Let’s see” says the child, and the process begins.
All things considered, apart from being the most appreciated of the senses, sight can also be devilishly deceiving. Nothing can delude our understanding of things more easily than our visual perception. Because our eyes trick us so frequently, psychiatrists are usually unconcerned when presented with cases of mild hallucination. Generally, it isn’t the sight of imaginary things that causes you to get locked up in an insane asylum ward, but the hearing of voices.
The famous Cartesian quote, the cogito, starts by advocating the treacherousness of our senses. The first thing one suspects of impermanence is, of course, sight. Following a methodical inquiry into uncertainty, one comes to the conclusion, “I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am.” Still, apart from lacking consistency and being made out of some kind of dream-fabric, sight is also a vessel of truth, presenting a way to freedom. Our sense of hearing, on the other hand, is more immediate and concrete, guided by a perfectly carved set of harmonic rules. If we humans were to have been created in a purely acoustic world, then our disenchantment might have been far more difficult. In the same way, the sense of smell provides an even more secure prison, for nothing can escape its inner animality when guided by scent alone. We observe this fact more clearly in the behaviour of pigs or dogs, for whom smell plays a prevalent role in the configuration of the world, in accordance with a primal instinct.
Proved wrong by the fact that we cannot fully trust the senses, our sensory-based and seemingly foolproof aspect of the world is deeply shaken. With this in mind, humanity’s eternal quest can only turn its aim inwardly, to the self.
This rather speculative introduction hints at Lucian Hrisav’s solo show, where the core theme begins to question the composition of an impermanent and purely visual world. Lucian was born in 1994 in Constanța and is now conducting his work in Bucharest. The series of works currently on display follows a path led by a special spraying technique that provides a blurring of the details. This particular effect has gained increasing popularity through its employment on social media. Commonly used to censure explicit content, this kind of filter renders the image as visual noise. The picture becomes a static screen. For those who are familiar with older TV schedules, after a certain hour, the program would end, leaving the screen to be filled by an ever-oscillating series of black and white dots. That was the signal that signified a lack of connection (signal). Technically, the cathodic tube of the TV was processing the cosmic radiation, thusly creating a vivid representation of the universe, transcribed in the language of noise and image. The screen is for television, which is what the canvas is for the artist.
It comes as no surprise that Lucian Hrisav appropriates this aesthetic of the “tele-visual” world, because he was born as a part of it. His generation is officially considered part of the post-communist era that emerged after the political regime change in Romania in 1989. According to this chronology, the analogue world had little to no influence on his personal and stylistic development. The reconciliation of two worlds, old and new, comes to him naturally. How? Firstly, in creating the images presented before you, he never once used a paint brush. This fact on its own isn’t by any means something ground-breaking. Jackson Pollock, through his dripping method, developed one of the most famous alternative ways of expression by not physically touching the canvas. In a similar way, Hrisav’s pulverisation technique uses spray paint, a democratic and street-friendly equivalent of the aerograph. This instrument brings an impersonal touch to the painting, eliminating the painter’s signature “touche”. The atomisation of the paint happens in a uniform pattern of dispersion. The application of multiple layers of paint in this manner makes it even harder to develop a distinctly personal style. Another obstacle is the hyperseptation of the paint, caused by the fact that the sprays used by the artist are meant for outdoor mural painting. Lucian manages to somehow transform this chromatic shriek into soft, nuanced whispers, addressing a person, not a citizen. To achieve this kind of sensitivity without changing the colours or technique is in itself something amazing. It’s like giving a massage with an excavator. How does he manage it? The effect of divisionism experienced through the pointillist paintings of Seraut or Signac does not fully apply here. The chromatic aspect has a fading quality gained through multiple layers of paint. This also gives an impression of transparency and iridescence commonly recognised in the stereoscopic Chinese images of the ‘80s.
Another element which deserves attention is the shape of the canvases. Making all the paintings square was a deliberate choice on the artist’s part. The composition is usually difficult to manoeuvre, given the fact that each intervention destabilises this otherwise perfect shape. Moreover, the painting process starts from a phone generated image. These photos cannot be square by nature, but must be rectangular, despite the fact that the square is the most commonly used format on social media. Before starting to spray the canvas, Hrisav first converts the reference images into squares, thus distorting them. The blur then comes to cover all of the entire surface. This obsession with the square stems from this contemporary use of the digital image. Its analogue counterpart, the printed image, had the rounded pixels as its structural basis, named “the ben day dots”, reproduced in artform through Roy Lichtenstein’s comic books. By contrast, the digital pixel becomes square. Hrisav notices this information and cleverly incorporates it into his work.
In the world of contemporary information, we can now plainly see the method by which our perception of an image is artificialized. Lucian continues to make old-school paintings, the only difference being that the method and concept are part of a digitalized world. He uses sprays instead of brushes because he is fully aware of the fact that his work has an equally important impact when presented digitally. He manages to humanize the pictures, the fading aspect being a reference to the process through which memories are made. When a memory is too clear, it implies a lack of emotional implication. Along with the intensity of the feelings invoked by memory, the imaginary quality decreases. This retroactive blur empowers nostalgia. An exhaustive description of something has a destructive effect on our sentimental attachment to it. All things considered, art’s purpose remains to physically represent an immaterial reality. This is also the purpose of this exhibition: to present the skewed image, the apparition that facilitates the transition from noise to signal. It’s the image of life, an image of its continuous stammering, both uncertain and free. Our existence is an interiority seen from the exterior.
* Text by Dan Popescu