PAINTINGS OF GABRIEL STAN

...„Possessing a real master technique anda lust of light, Stan seems to throw hispaint with an expert hand on the canvas,realising profiles a little fantastic, whichseem heavy with symbols. His savoir-faire,in some works, is flirting with a high realism. But Stan's work ismostly a look upon the world, which is loading his painting with energy and sensitivity. In his amazing way of painting St. Michel Mountain or Saint Malo there is an explosion: <<two places which have touched him since he has arrived in Bretagne. He was also interested in Britton hoods.>>“

Gérard Pernon
„Ouest France“
31 march 1999

THE ROMANIAN ARTIST OF THE '90

Gabriel Stan enters the depths of the spirit

Gabriel Stan, a Roumanian artist, has formulated a highly unique methodology. Through his paintings, he attempts to explain different phenomena from various points of view physics, mathematics, astrology, mythology and religion. He leads the viewer beyond the sense of conventional space and time. But before Mr. Stan can even begin painting, he must delve into the realm of his studies. The inventiveness of his techniques cerebral and tactile is the vehicle for his personal expression.
In the "Primordial Week" series, Mr. Stan depicts each day as independent worlds which we have access to in our sleep. The series are the days of the week represented in diptych form one painting for day, the other for night. The week is composed of seven days and is explained by mathematics. Each day is ruled by different planet. Anyone can commemorate in their subconscious the seven cosmic universes which exist simultaneously. Thursday is the strong day a day of fire vivid and red. For Mr. Stan, Thursday is, "The fourth dimension universe. We perceive it in our dreams." In Thursday, the two paintings are named Dance of fire and Day of Jupiter. The magic of the paintings lies in its optical effects. It is a special mode of sensation. The two figures in Day of Jupiter, are caught in a rainy torrent of flame-hued paint. The single figure in The Dance of Fire is a whirling dervish, suspended in mid-air. There is mystery, isolation and esoteric symbolism in these figures. The paint is handled viscously, as if poured. The paintings have the visceral impact of a Francis Bacon.

Elizabeth Exler,
"Manhattan Arts", New York
sept. - oct. 1992

THE MAGIC GAMES OF GABRIEL STAN

For anyone trying to decipher it, Gabriel Stan's art posesses in itself some difficulties. His art lies outside words, living through an inner existence, nurtured naturally from the „nowness" of life and plunging again in the infinite space of the unconscious. Gabriel Stan's composition contains in itself other worlds of mysterious spiritual nature. The artist's draws his inspiration from dreams, free associations, the suggestive of memory, the illumination of the fundamental strata of the subconscious, when man commits himself to a true dialogue with the world sometimes even melting into you, overlooking all notions of style, exploring the most intimate and forbidden spheres of the human psyche. This represents without doubt, the poetry of endless beginnings of the world, passing, like a catharsis through chaos and analogy leading in the end to profoundly creative and constructive artistic archetypes. All these spiritual technique are constantly revealing the main pillar of his art the idea of the uniqueness of the spirit which manifests itself in the destiny of mankind and the world, surely captured by the artist in the majesty of the feminine faces appearing in his paintings. It is this unique vision that confers to Gabriel Stan's art the universality of the images which illustrate authenticity of emotion opening up the universal models of space where the more visual contemplation can not be the only spiritual arbitrator. This doubtlessly represents the poetics of eternal and ever the same beginnings of the worldwide go like catharsis through chaos and analogy, and which finally lead to profoundly creative and constructive results. In Gabriel Stan's art, eternity manifests itself a rhythmical return to the same motifs representing labyrinths, tunnels, magical spaces and towns, water pools and stairs which generate primary schemes of history and existence.
Gabriel Stan's mysteries unfold in weightlessness, in a certain dream-like atmosphere pervaded by a greenish-lunar glow. Here, even the artist's technique naturally merges with the virtual topography of the composition, enhancing it with new meanings and forms. The form loses its emotional pathos creating a phenomenon of catastrophic states, as its configuration dissolves in frenzy of worlds.In this pictorial system one can find nothing else but the language of universality cancelling all borders, the language of rapprochement between the structures of the signs and those of the images, the language of cosmic and direct reality, where everything is endowed with supratemporal energy. The painter demonstrates the possibility of simultaneous existence in different temporal spaces, when plunging into the past and launching into the future organically coincide, when recollection and prediction are reciprocally complementary. Gabriel Stan redirects his art towards a lost synthesis and to the uniqueness of space and time, of graphic and linguistic images of the meaning materiality, where the images of cultural and intuitive memory merge into a miraculous, organic and enigmatic mixture.

Vitali PIATINBOV
New York
24 avr. 2000 (ASTRA)