THE MOTHER SHIP

82,5 cm x 112,5 cm

oil and ink on Fedrigoni Cottage Ivory cardboard, 320 g, 72 cm x 101 cm

 

In isolation, you inevitably start dreaming about long walks in nature. Art can transport you to such places, the mind is a complex machine for imaginative teleportation. With these unsuspected tools at hand, I hope that now is the time that people will get to rediscover art and the myriad ways in which it enriches each one of our lives. I hope that we become more reflective after this pandemic, willing to spend sublime moments viewing artworks or building new ways to experiment art. I hope we get to appreciate our free time and choose to spend it to recharge our lives in ways that will bring us closer to ourselves.

I have worked for six months on this artwork. The inspiration for it came during my first visit to Bâlea Lac, a glacier lake situated at 2034m in the Făgăraș Mountains, where I stumbled upon a huge rock. I called it "the mother ship" and I instantly knew I wanted to paint it. The mother ship ended up being an exponent of nature itself, an inanimate representative of escapism and the instinctual need of man for something greater than himself. The two brothers are inspired by the beach portraits of Rineke Dijkstra. I needed to add human beings to the work - although it's clear that the rock is the main character - and Dijkstra's portraits have something intrinsically human to them. The two brothers are there as witnesses and to appreciate the space, to experiment detachment from the restrictions imposed by society, to expand their consciousness towards nature.

 

The mother ship reflects human fragility in the face of nature but also the gentleness of nature. The mother ship is the perfect sanctuary for human vulnerability. Its ancestral age comes in perfect contrast with the youthfulness of the brothers although they seem to be related; the rock seems to be protective of them although, in reality, it's completely indifferent to how life is unfolding.

After the lockdown, I want to find public spaces willing to exhibit "The Mother Ship", I want it to go from one space to the next, I want it to become an itinerant artwork before finding it a home. If you are interested in exhibiting the work somewhere or if you wish to buy it, please drop me an email at info@sorinatomuletiu.ro.

Later edit: this artwork was part of my first group exhibition organized during the White Night of the Galleries 2020.

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