Elian’s work allows me to speak freely about postmodernism in recent Romanian art. Her canvases recall Greenaway’s films (we share a common weakness for this wizard of the moving image). A fantastic world, which Elian presents us in her paintings,through her objects. A world of the spectacle, like unraveling over time of the Baroque, for which Elian has admitted affinities (I would add, a Baroque gracefully gliding toward the Rococo). I said postmodernism, no? The ironic, grotesque revisit tenderness, love, the stable emotions… Lucidity and reverie also meet. Mythical beings search for their place in the vanishing world of this end of the millenium. The clown lives alongside putti. Threats taste of farse. Interpretations of classic images are manipulated in a world of masks at times personalized by a Fellinian expressionism.
ADRIAN GUTA / ELIAN
Catalogue published by the Center of Contemporary Art,
Soros Foundation, 2001
