Mircea Suciu: Earthly Delights

Mennour, Paris, FR

By Maxime Foucquet

October 4, 2023

Romanian painter Mircea Suciu showcases an astonishing series of new paintings at Mennour, 47 rue Saint-André-des-Arts in Paris, France. Suciu’s first solo presentation at Mennour, titled Earthly Delights—referencing both Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and André Gide’s Fruits of the Earth—runs from September 12 until October 7, 2023.

“For the artist, the word “delights” in the context of the images in the series refers not to amenities, but to the weaknesses of man and it’s human finitude, being used rather in an ironic sense. In the upper part of each composition we distinguish photographic images depicting religious scenes from Pentecostal ceremonies, scenes in which figures are captured in ecstasy at various music concerts, erotic scenes from famous films, portraits of the mentally ill, taken from the archives of Professor Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital, and séances. Although these images are apparently discordant, they are in fact complementary and constitute a fragment of the image of humanity that the artist is studying and highlighting, the main themes being sexuality, religion, anxiety, religious ecstasy and mass hysteria. Photographic images are accompanied by pictorial images. The paintings are influenced by Spanish and Dutch Baroque. In particular, the famous “bodegón” style, in which 17th-century figures appear in still life and chiaroscuro is used systematically. Hallucinogenic mushrooms, a piece of meat, a poppy flower, a pine cone or a walnut — these images are generally chosen for their symbolic value. The pine cone appears in the designs of esoteric traditions such as Freemasonry, Theosophy, Gnosticism and esoteric Christianity.” (Press release Mennour)

Mircea Suciu juxtaposes the aesthetic of a photographical image with the historical painterly tradition rooted in baroque still life painting, evoking a relationship between both images in a similar vein as the Kuleshov effect in film montage. From irony to drama, from expression to resisting to the emergence of a clear narrative. “The composition is like a mood painting. The photographic image induces a pictorial reaction. This type of composition is reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg and the way he created his images. Mircea Suciu thus develops the links between an intense, raw reality captured in photographic images and culture as a remedy, a means of balancing or correcting a society in perdition. The relationship between images in the same composition is both simple and complex. There is an apparent conflict or opposition between them. It’s a relationship between popular and classical culture.”

Discover more on Mennour’s website here.