145. Veiled Young Girl [2020]

Master puppeteer in a puppet theatre, Georges Mazilu focuses his plastic discourse of a stunning expressive force around his compositional chimeras. This time we follow the journey of a single protagonist: this "la jeune fille en fleur", metaphor of the game between real and imaginary, caught in the fixings of chiaroscuro, with a serene body and innocent demeanour, covered in veils. The eclectic color scheme, seemingly inspired by the works of old masters, reveals the artist's interest for brown, red, ochre, orange, or green. We notice the intentionally exaggerated traits, the mark of his personal style, but also details such as the small and delicate flowers that weave their way through the character's clothing, blooming determinedly from somewhere within him. Mazilu's works sum up the fusion between abstract painting and harsh realism, which the artist masters with skill. He paints the fantastic and transforms abstract constructions into harmonious structures. He creates profound metaphors intended for the human being and proposes a psychological narrative with a stunning expressive force. Mazilu's imagined characters reflect the sensitive aesthetics of the Renaissance painter Bruegel and become hybrid beings, paradoxical, whose humanity is only partially recognizable. The artist relies on corporality and facial expressions and takes inspiration from Greek sculpture in shaping his iconic figures. His protagonists enjoy a carefully studied pantomime, often engaged in theatrical actions, like characters in an anti-commedia dell'arte. Almost as if passed through a sepia filter, Mazilu's works become undeniable visual dramas that defy the laws of nature. The scenario proposed by the artist becomes, par excellence, a fusion of visual dramas that defy the laws of nature. Mazilu compresses the human silhouette to abstraction and focuses his attention on the faces of his characters, which he considers one of the most expressive parts of the body, along with hands and feet. The whole composition revolves around the characters, who are never reproductions of existing beings, but are detailed constructions stemming from the artist's imagination. The space and atmosphere are deciphered only in the end, closely in tune with the partially humanized puppet-characters. Mazilu becomes a virtuoso of the aesthetics of the ugly and creates true pictorial metaphors of the fantastic. The world in his canvases is utopian and takes on the values of an imaginary realm and of a reality diametrically opposed to the known one.

References

"Mazilu. Hybrid Faces", Tribuna Publishing, Cluj-Napoca, 2020.

Dimensions

width 33.5 cm, height 41.5 cm

Description

acrylic on canvas, signed bottom left, in black, "Mazilu"; dated and titled, on the back, "22.01.(20)20; Veiled young girl"

Dating

2020

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