52. Esquire Men [2013]

Man and humanity dominate Ștefan Ungureanu's artistic creation. But he is not interested in particular stories, individual dramas or achievements, but looks at people in a statistical universe. In an article, Erwin Kessler identifies the following reference groups in the author: generational groups (young or gerontocrats), professional groups (specialists, scientists, technicians, busybodies), or gender groups (almost all its groups have an exclusively male component). Referring to the current work, strikingly, we notice that all the characters are men. Their particular facial features are hidden, precisely in order to suggest a certain group characteristic, that feature which determines membership of a particular category. The term "esquire" comes from the English language, where it has two meanings: an archaic one referring to the squire of medieval knights, a contemporary one showing the form of respect towards a man, the abbreviation being placed after the person's name. In contemporary legal practice, it has also been established that the term "esquire", having only masculine connotations, can only be used for men. At the same time, the work was created in 2013, when the artist was developing the series of works symbolically gathered under the phrase "Power Postures". Connecting the three points, we can conclude that the work symbolically transposes an everyday power relationship in a society dominated by men, who hold and pull the levers of power, those gentlemen in the shadows who silently contribute to the development of their community. Among Ștefan Ungureanu's characters there is a strange solidarity, an almost blind cooperation, which turns them into a single body. This unique body of characters is reminiscent of John Baldessari's creation in the 1980s, who said of himself that he "will most likely be remembered in history as the artist who covered the faces of characters with polka dots".

Dimensions

width 100 cm, height 90 cm, custom 90 × 100 cm

Description

acrylic and collage on canvas, signed, dated and entitled on the reverse, with black, "Ștefan Ungureanu, Esquire Men, 2013"

Dating

2013

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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