November Night

Elegance is born out of the free and skillful acceptance of constraint. Costel Chițimuș’s painterly works featured in the show “November Night” constitute a demonstration, at the same time discrete and compelling, of this very fact. The artist assumes the local tradition of his craft without bravado, but also without timidity; his painting refers to the genre of religious icons, but impressively and concomitantly manages both to avoid a transgressive or gratuitously defiant approach and to denote vigorous originality. Chițimuș’s works therefore possess a particular finesse, manifested both in the painterly act as such and in his construction of metaphor. Employing poetical, theological and folkloric sources, his symbolic use of vegetal elements, particularly the linden flower, is charmingly tensed, almost ascetic on one hand, and yet, on the other hand, calling forth a refined, visual sensuousness.