99. Messenger [2023]

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99. Messenger [2023]

Felix Aftene

1972, Vaslui

Estimate:

EUR 7.000 - 12.000

Sold

EUR 9.500

References

The catalogue "Felix Aftene", Performantica Publishing House, Iași, 2010. "Felix Aftene. Arhitecturi ale memoriei" ("Felix Aftene. Architectures of Memory"), Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2016. CHITUȚĂ, Alexandru Constantin, "Felix Aftene. Noi și Ele, o privire asupra lumii animalelor" ("Felix Aftene. Us and Them, a look at the animal world"), Brukenthal National Museum Publishing House, Sibiu, 2022.

acrylic on canvas, 100 x 130 cm, signed and dated at the bottom, in black, "Felix Aftene, (20)23"

Felix Aftene's works describe a hybrid world, inhabited by a broad category of allegoric characters. "The Book of Imaginary Beings" by Jorge Luis Borges is what inspires him when sketching some archetypal characters, which often inhabit the human subconscious. The artist flicks through his childhood inspiration diary and takes notes, this time in pictures, in the form of entire pages worth of dreams and memories. Felix Aftene is a collector of feelings that can be transposed into art, as well as a metaphysical visionary who tends to lock within his canvases a universe defying the notion of time. He notably captured "the spiritual virtues of man - man and music, man and theatre", and he also suggested an interpretation of the depicted post-modernist beings in a mythological key. Aftene is the artist in a permanent search for new shapes and lines, hence rejecting the classicism which would only bleach his canvases. He masterfully managed to search the depths, capturing the human body as a temple. He lengthens, widens and squashes his heroes' silhouettes, assigning the human being a primordial place in his creation. The oneiric universe of antique myths and folkloric traditions is transposed in the harmonious relationship between the seraphic figures and animal and plant incarnations. The mannerism that fosters wistfulness is enhanced by the metaphysical representation of the specificity of human beings, and the characters’ levitation proposed by the artist reminds of the surreal flight of Marc Chagall’s protagonists. The artist adhered to the theories proposed by existentialists and transformed them into art. He transcribes his dreams from his memory on the paper and later on the canvas. The recurring blue in his works refers to the Voroneț blue and also to the geographical setting of his childhood. In Aftene's work, the colour blue appears in an oxymoronic association between flight and fall, as well as through the antithetic combination between energy and enthusiasm of electrifying accents, and those mellow brush strokes full of calm and melancholy. Felix Aftene makes portraits of travellers of transience, and he himself always is always searching for new ways to illustrate lines and shapes. His characters are strongly connected to music and theatre. The flute song, recurrent in his works, proposes a magical, transcendental musicality and subtly sums up aspects of nature and rural life. The ecstatic theatricality of the compositions is translated into harmonious rhythms of chromaticism and compositional organization. Aftene's "Heralds", exemplified in an extensive series rich in meaning, reveal the complexity of the human being and the archetypal symbols most representative of the artist. (D.C.)

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