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Artbeat

Comanescu, the orange painter

By Vivid writer: Claudia Darian

The work of Nicolae Comanescu: playful, ironic and bursting with contrast

Posted: 13/08/2006

Gallery 26 is owned by Octavian Rusu, a Romanian who has been living in Germany but returned recently to open this small yet beautiful gallery on Staicovici nr 26. It joins the home gallery trend set forth by Vlad Nanca some years ago. Notwithstanding its newness, Gallery 26 has had already several very good exhibitions lately, including the former bad boy painter of the Rostopasca group, Nicolae Comanescu, three artists based in Belgrade, the British artist Mark Brogan, and Leona Dodig and Deja Grba.

Nicolae Comanescu was a good choice for the owner, as his impressive paintings burst with strong colour and contrast. This is Comanescu’s style: playful and ironic, not taking himself too seriously, which allows him a certain liberty and detachment from his own Catch-22. Though some of his paintings may strike one as a tad kitsch (see his "Girls in Bikini on Beach" series), Comanescu laughs at himself, while entitling his works (two big paintings) "Spending your Mid Life Crisis on the Beach". In fact, the entire exhibition at gallery 26 was called "Beach Boy", reflecting Nicolae Comanescu in his late thirties, still provocative with black –white lines as opposed with bright red-orange in the same painting and spontaneous blizzards of colours or simply a spot of orange on a yellow background or a yellow figure on a green leaf.

Nicolae Comanescu has in the past excelled himself through versatile imagination ranging from painting to video installations, but also assertively deconstructing taboos or formal structures with Dumitru Gorzo, another well known and talented painters of their generations, working together in the Rostopasca group, which was very active between 1998 and 2001. Now that all former members of the group have taken an independent approach, Comanescu finds himself juggling with concepts of power in a relaxed manner, as he does in his "King of Flies" and in his many movie-like characters from the "New York / Times Square" series.

The colours are vibrant with amazing contrasts, while the manner of painting appears effortless; the 25 paintings in the Galerie 26 exhibition had a wonderful sense of unity, twisting between strong colours and opposing concepts, as the powerful urbanity that renders you breathless and huge green leafs and singular figures that offer an incredible peace of mind and relaxation. That is also what Nicolae Comanescu says: “I enjoy opposing things, I am always looking for contrasts of any kind, it could be a spot of green in a crowded city, and it could be the sky above while lying down in your car. Just anything.”

His Gallery 26 exhibition managed all that: lots of contrasts, beautiful colours and a great painter who has the aloofness of not taking himself too seriously. Nonetheless, Comanescu is a painter with many exhibitions and shows abroad to his name, being in the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2002, the Free Biennial in New York and Boundless Balkans in Belgrade. In 2004, he exhibited in the then newly opened Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest in the big opening exhibition Romanian Artists (and not only) Love Ceausescu’s Palace. I am sure that he will continue to surprise.

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