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Ștefan Triffa – Bio

American Abstract Expressionism is an ultimate modernist experience, that still has clear rules of operation: aim for bidimentionality, color, gesture, sentiment.

It requires time. All artists that decided to investigate this paradigm for within, had shows after age 30. An art for the mature referred to, by many, in the 50’s, as “romantic”, became almost mainstream by 60’s and 70’s, and turned to become the favourite whipping horse for pop artists, in their quest topoke fun at “serious” art. Ștefan Triffa studied art at the end of the 70’s, under artists belonging to the second generation of Abstract Expressionist artists (Pousette – D’art, Theodoros Stamos). By the 80’s, when he started to develop his style, abstract painting, was way out of fashion. Galleries and museums were showing neo-pop, conceptual or minimal based art.

Later on, this turned out to be one of the best things that happened in Ștefan’s life.

The road for abstraction became a thorny one. In this “romantic” situation, the male artist could at leat bleed freely in his studio munching on his rage, sorrows, and obsessions, heading gradually to a new type of avant-gardism. The perpetual crisis, and the “I’ll take my time” ingredient, served as an optimal way to create. And, just how does this way of Ștefan work, while making a painting? Everything happens at night, when everyone asleep, or very early in the morning when no one is awake yet. A canvas is set on the floor, where, depending on a formal intention, unclear yet, not unlike a greyhound, a sniffing for the emotion begins, the artist applies the color that will dominate the painting, either by hand or by decalcomania. The dominant color is applied gesturally or at random. When the “attack” occurs straight by hand without using a brush, the process happens very fast, with yearnings and humming, as when something comes to life by the sheer energy of the body, ineffable yet born with great effort, like a piece of flash.

When decalcomania is being used, the result put forth has a more reflective tome. In both cases there are more misses than hits.

The artist steps back and makes decisions like a god to decide if the framing is “good”. If not, another attempt to get it right this time, follows. Once the background is agreed on, the next thing is to introduce some figuration, round hand marks, criss-crossing the background, chromatic butterflies, organic silhouettes of undefined creatures. When decalcomania is being used to create composition, paint application appears only around the holes. Everything is subordinated to the quest of finding the color that would express light and dark, witjout mediation. The other words, tu put together an artistic equation that in a perfomative adventure goes through an effort to express a feeling by an attempt to establish distance, orientation, sunset, while avoiding the explicit and recognizable that comes from the world of things.

Dan Popescu