The Gift Painting

The defloration of the painting Nicoletta Isar Fleur de lis – a coat of arms in the manly heraldry – is the heading of what appears to be yet another secret story of Victor Hagea, suggested in the title of one of his latest paintings called The Gift. I am simply drawn into the specular universe of this painting, and intrigued by some visual patters in the painting, for example, the deictic hand; the breaking of the surface by which something is revealed, which are shared with the very last painting, The Back Door to Paradise. Yet each painting, I must stress, weaves its singular and unique poetics. If we assume that in The Gift too we have the reverse side of Paradise as in The Back Door to Paradise, albeit a transparent gate to Paradise, then Paradise itself must be somewhere beyond the field of vision where the body remains, letting appear just a synecdoche of itself: the hand penetrating the very center of the painting, and our non-paradisiac world. But what does it say the deictic gesture of that hand? Where to this triumphant posture is hinting? It seems to proclaim something quite urgent with another fleur de lis. This is a kind of “cheirotopic” statement (that is, with the hand, from Greek cheir) of the artist, presumably. A signature, a trace of his presence, a statement about being there, magnificently crafting, like everything else this specular and spectacular surface of painting. This is the point of artistry when it reaches its climax, where the trace of the hand of the artist paradoxically disappears. Letting instead painting appear by some magic invisible touch. But let us go back to the leit-motif of the fleur de lis as it is twice proclaimed in the painting. Fleur de lis has been normatively associated with the Virgin’s symbol, not that that norm governs this painting, or that it may matter. Rather, what the artist does with this norm matters: his playful series of associations, while acknowledging the old, he affirms something new, refreshing this botanical repertoire, and unveiling the infinite potential of its semantics. Yet Mary’s flower remains nevertheless a virginal symbol here. This is a flower, as well as a spear in the hand of the artist – an insignia of heraldry as well as of mastership – the stylus by which he masterfully penetrates the womb of the en-choric space of creation which is this painting. The painting is a sacrosanct temple towards the otherworldy Paradise, yet to be discovered and unveiled… By us. It intrigues us and incites us to enter (or to reflect upon the painting) because the threshold between these two worlds (our profane world and the edenic space beyond) is seductively flanked by two provocative Floras. For in the painting, the pillars are not flanked by the awesome archangels holding their fiery swords, but by two subtle allegorical bodies of the Floras. Therefore these muses like Floras, wrapped in their longs voluptuous garlands, do not keep us away like at the old doors of Paradise, but invite us to partake in this sacrosanct act of defloration of the painting. To Victor Hagea, homage • February 2017

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:16.9 W x 20.5 H x 1 D in

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