1. 21.IX.1997 [1997]

Florin Mitroi's work, a recognized personality both for his artistic and teaching activity, stands out as a brutal, visceral work, with esoteric undertones in places. Especially concerned with painting, Florin Mitroi will find his vocation also in graphic art or photography. His work will consist of a long series of portraits, which critics have often decoded in the key of the self-portrait that no longer entirely conforms to the model. The artist will be interested in essentializing the figurative and synthesizing the deepest thoughts efficiently. Thus, we penetrate into the universe of self-portraits with a knife, a universe that stretches throughout the last decade of the past century. These works come to us as diary pages, chaotically and frenetically detached from the artist's notebook in his pursuit of the ideal. The titles are suggestive: "21. IX.1997" or "23.XI.1996" and place Mitroi's works in a specific chronology, providing us with important details about the artist's daily life. A retrospective look at the artist's entire activity indicates dating as a preferred and addressed artifice by the artist over the years. The dating becomes an integral part of the work, a prominent part that stands out and imposes itself distinctively, passing in front of the viewer in a specific formula: the day and the year are written in Arabic numerals, while the artist prefers Roman numerals for marking the month. In the present work, we find these inscriptions in the lower right part of the work. The notation merges here with the background of the work and gives continuity to the action undertaken by the protagonist. In essence, dating occurs at the end of the work when the last touches furrow the surface of the sheet. Thus, dating becomes a finite entry, marking the completion of an important phase. The issue of time and its irreversible flow into infinity is thus highlighted. Florin Mitroi's work is, therefore, an alienated projection of an unknown self, released by the artist onto the work surface. At a closer look, we are greeted by complex processes of introspection and detachment, and sometimes even alienation. Mitroi's self-portraits capture states and feelings from the most diverse, from sadness and devastation to suspicion or resignation. Following the artist's work chronologically, we discern a meticulous and closely programmed relationship to self-mutilation. Violence emerges as a response to everyday and spiritual disappointments and shortcomings, as a form of revolt against the system and even as a protest over oneself, which subscribes to theses that the artist would in fact disavow, if possible. The self-violence that we identify in Mitroi's works can be understood as the artist's defensive reflex in front of the work sheets, without identifying any blame or any trace of success. If in the works from the '80s the axe blade hovering above the bowed head of the character predominated, from the '90s the punishment weapon will undergo a mutation and take the form of a knife. Sometimes, the torture instrument takes different shapes, lengthens, shortens, doubles in volume or directly presents itself in another guise. If at first the weapon levitated around the character's body, over time the artist will take responsibility and take action into his own hands. The protagonist seems, from here onwards, to assume the torture instrument and to direct it consciously towards the jugular plexus, the veins, or directly towards the heart. The aggressiveness in art will be directly related to a society which is, apparently, non-violent. We thus meet a brutalism that violently transcends towards the background, exceeding the precepts of form and proposing a complex encryption of the author's intentions. Florin Mitroi's work thus facilitates an ideal framework for in-depth research, oriented towards oneself, towards art and towards the world; a work that will result in works of overwhelming suffering, which the artist will never disavow.

References

KESSLER, Erwin, "The one who punishes himself. Stefan Bertalan, Florin Mitroi, Ion Grigorescu. Art and Romania in the '80s-'90s", Curtea Veche Publishing, Bucharest, 2009.

Dimensions

width 25 cm, height 35 cm

Description

ink on paper, signed and dated lower right, in black, "21.IX.1997, FM"

Dating

1997

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