Born in: 1977, Bucharest, Romania
Lives in: Oakland, USA
Media: Painting, Mixed media, Drawing
Describe your work in 3 words: In a continuous flux, contradictions, playfulness
See More Work: https://www.emahsin.com - https://www.instagram.com/emasdas/
"I translate the external world, reducing it to colorful vortexes of familiar yet fictitious forms. Its main idea is based on a facet of modern physics which states that everything that seems solid is really comprised of energy and that molecules in motion are subject to human intervention."
What themes does your work involve?
I am interested in 1) the mechanics of motion, its visual translation and the dichotomies intrinsic to it (transfer vs. change; action vs. reaction); 2) how memory relates to perception, and 3) the fluidity and tension of contradictions (organized chaos and uncontrolled order). I am interested in pushing the limits of abstraction and suggesting emotional / physical motion in an immediate, visceral manner rather than generating self -referential and/or didactic works.
Describe your creative process.
My multi-axial curiosity overcomes the fear of failing; my artistic life is guided by "just do it", and "what if?" and its the eureka moments mixed failed experiments. When I work, I don't think about art: why spoil a perfectly fine moment with prefabricated desires of "what" and "how" it should look like. Yet I believe in being spontaneous but thinking beforehand. This allows me to both respond to what I'm working on, but also think of the next work(-s): thus, the work makes the works.
What influences your work? What inspires you?
Making art is what defines me as a person. As an artist, I am interested in choices: what remains to be seen, what is absent and how decisions are made. I evaluate the possibilities for changes from one drawing to the next without visual redundancy or content disruption. I incorporate in my visual lexicon elements which vary from my immediate surrounding to Eastern European folklore, the aesthetic of automatisms, absurd theatre, mathematics, poetry, music, contemporary and traditional art.
What is good art? What makes a piece of art great?
This question makes me think of, and possibly find an answer to it in Wallace Stevens’ Metaphors of a Magnifico: “Twenty men crossing a bridge,/ Into a village,/ Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,/Into twenty villages,/ Or one man? Crossing a single bridge into a village”.
I favor works that break away from the linear order of (a) narrative, thus challenge/ question my own experience of seeing/being and become vehicle for extended "travels" into the word of new wonders.
What is the role of the artist today?
I grew up in Romania, an oppressive Communist country, where art was considered subversive. The only way to survive the prison-like quotidian was by reinventing the Wonderland. For me, art was/is a door to revealing personal and/or collective poetic vulnerability. Paradoxically, it's also a way to bring joy, inspiration, and interaction to communities; to record, translate and open dialogues on societal issues. Either way, it requires not only skills and content but mostly sincerity in intent.
This page was published by Circle Foundation for the Arts © CFA Press ∙ Images are courtesy of the artist