PAL B. STOCK: SECRET ENTRANCE: Opening: Friday, 23 September 2022, 18,30-20:00 h - 34 Slobozia street, Bucharest, RO

Pal B. Stock's works are about mystery, the ineffable, searching and finding. The mass-coloured wax surface acquires colours and undulations which the artist shapes in the creative process, sedimenting non-figurative images that arise from overlapping layers of paint. As Mark Rothko says, "Their explanation must come out of a consummated experience between picture and onlooker. The appreciation of art is a true marriage of minds.”[1]

 

Pal B. Stock is fascinated by what may hide outside the visible image, what lies behind what we perceive in our immediate vicinity. Secret entrances often lead to hidden chambers, unknown tunnels or passages, unsuspected roads, or blocked access routes. The images flashed before our eyes create a direct dialogue with the viewer and can only be interpreted after a process of confrontation with the work.

 

Whether it is an entrance, a landscape, a window or large water droplets, the viewer is immersed in the organicity of the colours and lightness contained. The works often exude a barely perceptible rustle and movement that conjures up a state of reverie, absence or solitude. The viewer is invited to enter an unknown and mysterious world, a place of intense emotions and isolation.

 

The technique of encaustic painting - mass-coloured wax - allows it to be coloured in layers, creating an image that looks lit from within. It is this glowing from inside that makes the emotions provoked by these paintings felt and underlines their power. Sunset and sunrise, raindrops rendered in blurred intertwining colours contain the artist's subjective, emotional response to the surrounding nature. It is how Pal B. Stock perceives and relates to the universe, how nature takes its daily course and how light changes its reflection according to the areas it seizes. "Secret entrance" is about that hidden place where we retreat to contemplate, reflect, and to find ourselves.

 

Pal B. Stock is an artist, whose vision was impaired at an early age, suffering from a disease in the cornea of his eyes; the artist began to see endless strings of droplets, and the whole of reality began to be seen as if under a film of water. His works depict the artist's view of the colourful, diffuse, isolated surrounding reality. It is a fluid way of perceiving the world in an imperceptible movement that creates a sense of calm and tranquillity.

 

"Secret entrance" proposes a reassessment of the natural world through the prism of sensations and emotions, opening a new dialogue on how we perceive the world today: Can a contemporary person still feel the excitement of the Sunrise and Sunset? Can raindrops bring back the scent and fragrance of the beginning? Do small winding streets full of greenery still bring back memories? Can we stop even for a second to contemplate the mystery of life around us?

 

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