BOGDAN TZIGAN

SPIRITS OF COLOR
a language of freedom

What I tried to show through these works reflects, in some way, my personal worries about the world we live in and the needs that humanity has in this century. Contemporary art, in the past 20 years, has the tendency to repeat itself, and I consider that it reached a point of an empty carcass. If in the 80’s there was a need of an Andy Warhol to illustrate the state of being of society then, I believe that it’s now the time to reflect strongly about the role art should have HERE and NOW, because humanity has reached a point in which the excess of communication is at its peak, transforming us intro receptors of hundreds of gigabits of information that we receive on a daily basis, willing or non-willing, and we’re not capable of processing all this data or emit valid communicational channels towards our friends. We lead a more and more virtual existence in which communication has been reduced to the scarce vocabulary dictated by our computers. What do we have left?

I consider that art in this century should offer solutions for the needs humanity has HERE and NOW. Art should remind people of what it means to feel a color, to vibrate along with it, to re-teach people how to feel. I painted landscapes because I consider that people need these colors, beauty , aesthetics, just like Picasso painted sausages during war because people were hungry, because I consider that people need to re-experience what light allows us to see: colors that give the spirit a state of exaltation and thankfulness that they are allowed to live and feel these emotions. I searched for the spirit of places, I tried to listen to these spirits speak to us, I searched for the metaphysics given by the carnation of a nude woman. In a way, we speak of a return to primitive, archaic emotions of the human being, of a return to the magic of places, to the transformations the human spirit suffers in contact with it. These are invariable and people need these emotions in order to feel as a whole, in no matter what century we lead our existence. I consider these works to be contemporary art because they offer solutions to the viewer and speak TO the era we live in , and not ABOUT it.

I chose to paint using all the colors of my palette because I love

them all just as much as I can love a woman, or the first breath of cool air of the morning or the energy of a strong sun. I chose to let the color come out of the landscape, out of the body of a woman, out of the overwhelming gaze of a shaman , in which lays our last hope of healing. When I paint I enter a state very much like the trance of the shamans : my mind goes void, I feel heat in my chest, my pupils dilate and my hands have a life of their own, using color frenetically, under the command of someone else, or something else. The colors from my works must have a life of their own, must exist instinctively and intuitive and heal all that is bad or rotten, to remind of love and lust for life. We can only understand freedom by learning to enjoy life and by letting ourselves be overwhelmed by its magic. The magic of places and people we are lucky enough to meet is real, it’s music..