One of the emerging woman artist increasingly making her presence felt on the international exhibition scene is the artist Carmen Belean. The solo exhibition Songs of Innocence marks her first curatorial collaboration with the contemporary art gallery Anaid Art Gallery, held at the Altes Dampfbad in Baden-Baden. The exhibition brings together a series of paintings and watercolors created in 2025, in a photorealistic approach with neo-romantic elements.
The title of the exhibition references the world of English Romanticism, as revealed in the work of William Blake, where nature is seen as a manifestation of divinity and creative force. For Carmen Belean, the relationship between human and nature is built on a subtle, personal level, where nature becomes a space of withdrawal, reflection, and confrontation with the self. Her female characters retreat into a lush natural setting, fully aware of their own fragility, searching for moments of self-reflection, contemplation, and remembrance. It is a moment of silence, of pause — a withdrawal from the noise of everyday life.
The swimming pool, as a motif in contemporary painting, often goes beyond the idea of a leisure space and becomes a metaphor loaded with multiple meanings: isolation, reflection on identity, the relationship between humans, nature, and time. From the realism of the 1960s to the psychological or abstract interpretations by contemporary artists, the swimming pool becomes an ambivalent space — both familiar and mysterious.
If in David Hockney’s pool representations we encounter the exuberance of life bathed in the scorching Californian light, shaping masculine bodies; in Alex Katz’s work, the pool is often just a décor element for gatherings of the American upper class; in Eric Fischl, the pool takes on a psychological charge — a world at the edge between intimacy and spectacle; and in Peter Doig, it is shaped as a game of memory and dream.
In Carmen Belean’s case, the swimming pool is a space of solitude, where the characters are isolated from the surrounding world. Her works exude a strong sense of introspection and melancholy. Viewed from this perspective, the pool is no longer a space for relaxation, but a psychological one — where the female figures appear trapped in their own thoughts.
Curator: Diana Dochia, PhD
