Irina Alimanestianu

2024
2022-2023 2020-20212017-2019
2015-2016
2012-2014
2009-2011
2006-2008
2001-2004
1997-2000

While reviewing my work of 30 years, I realized that technology plays a big part in my understanding of reality, of time and space. Both as a tool to observe and as a vast source of knowledge. It is a game changer for painters.

There is the world we see with our eyes, the one we physically feel and live in. And concurrently the one we see beyond human capacity, through telescopes and other scientific means (galaxies, synapsis, energy waves). These two ways of experiencing the physical have affected how I understand nature and matter, the pushing and pulling of what is humanly approachable and what is well beyond me. Affecting how I construct space on the canvas; the horizon line (if there is one), the sense of gravity, the relationship of masses to each other.

Technology lets us experience multiple worlds at once. It expands our community, our opportunity to connect or reject. Our memory, our personal history is not ours any more. The immediacy, the variety of information we absorb creates unexpected connections and odd juxtapositions that jar the mind, adjust perspectives. In 1997 it compelled me to mix iconographies, painting styles, formal notions of color and composition. And has expanded from there into a more intuitive expression.

Everything is happening at the same time. We sort and edit and come up with meanings and feelings, pulling from everywhere. With my paintings I hope to slow down the process of seeing, allow the viewer a moment to process differently.