SIMONA RUNCAN

Simona Runcan lived and worked in Bucharest, Romania, and Paris, France from 1942-2007.

Simona Runcan's paintings still seem to come into being, even though they were started more than 30 years ago. They are still taking shape: the cones, the cylinders, and the other figures that keep on reappearing in her paintings, all seem to be changing as one is looking at them. Ever so slightly leaning or ever so slowly falling apart. Runcan would make these figures using various pieces of fabric – twisting them, turning them, and tying them up. Or by simply letting the fabric wrap around an object that she had made - hiding it and letting the outlines of it get blurred. She would arrange these figures on a horizontal line and photograph them prior to painting them. The painting ending up offering a matter-of-fact observation of what are not facts, but something that is concealed rather than revealed. 

Then, as she was approaching the year of 1989 and became a witness to the Romanian revolution, these shapes would be returning but also shifting. Through the fabric one senses not so much the outline of a body, as one senses the movements of a body in pain. The way that the fabric now is twisted, turned and tied up, making for a diferent sort of distortion. Wreaths that are commemorating the dead are resting on the ground, while around them everything is coming to life.

"No anecdote, no event, nothing sensational, not even the smallest human presence, just the fascination of the trace left by it."

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