THE DUCTUS: FROM STONE TO LOTUS

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

 

Article by Roxana Florina Popa

 

The force of the emotion. The emotion of the force.

The balance of force. The explosion.

The metamorphose into painting.

Force and emotion pour into each fibre of space that the painter Christian Lucian Hamsea goes through. He collects them along the way to build them into a landscape of their own liberation. He shapes them in a place which is right for them.

The emotion settles down becoming calm and crystalises in sparks. The painter sets lights with every step as he enters territories of paint through shadows, colours, ingenious forms and accentuated lines. Every centimeter of canvas is under sharp focus.

What about the force? It became a pulsating foundation for the entire art composition. Its constant rivers of vibrations to the outwards immerse the spectator within a new world.

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

Interview with the artist Christian Lucian Hamsea

Roxana Florina Popa: Your paintings have an impressive style. Certain lines, contours, accents seem to conclude the act of painting with a great gesture. What kind of force, what beliefs, ideas and feelings are imprinted in your works?

Christian Lucian Hamsea: I distinguish between style and calligraphy. Concerning my style, I do not consider it exhausted. Calligraphy is about hand and sentiment. Both are my working tools. The line – “ductus” and the tint are means of expression. They are rich with feelings. Once, somebody told me that one can present a world in 10cm of line.

I apply force, pressure and at the same time, tenderness. All express themselves like 200 kilotons which are concentrated as in a pencil point and they find their balance there without breaking it. According to music poetics, the artist is the man in all his capacities, including those affective and intellectual. What comes out on my canvas is always generated by emotion.

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

I work without being project orientated. My art is the result of a process that occurs within a limited time. At a certain moment, the thinking process begins. This is when I like to find the balance between plastic intelligence and feelings. In order to start painting, I need an impression that stimulates me. I like to add a note of irony or self-irony when these impressions are too serious. What I see around me, what I live, is gets sedimented inside me and without doing prior sketches, it simply irrupts on canvas. Impulse and impression is not all. I like to give balance to everything I paint in terms of concept and force. All this happens unconsciously. For me, art is the expression of the soul. By processing my perceptions and being, through composition and decomposition, I let myself transported to a new, never-before-seen reality. This is what keeps me moving as an artist.

RFP: Some works seem to subtly play with the idea of mirror, reflection or projection. What is their significance?

Mixed media on paper

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

CLH: I like to paint in the area of the poetic abstract. This means that I am always at the border of the abstract with nature. I want to understand the relief and the force that nature used to create mountains. I also add my daily impressions. A principle I like to apply is that things between which I establish a dialog should get along well with each other. Anyway, here we are already in the area of the spectator.

RFP: What is the art trend your works belong to?

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

CLH: I have recently discussed a lot with the artist Horia Vancu about the symbolic realism. The symbolic realism is about filtrating reality. Nature becomes a symbol. Painting happens this time from canvas to nature and not from nature to canvas. What is painted is a symbol of nature. Techniques are no longer relevant. What is important is how you begin the dialogue with whatever surrounds you. For example, I start painting a landscape thanks to a stimulus and I apply vectors of power. Elements of other landscapes appear in my synthetic landscape. Some characters may appear only to make the spectator aware of proportions and to position him. At the end, I apply the line as an accent. Line is very important to me and has three meanings: tension, de-tension and accent. My hand is also important for modulating and, by making an impact, it creates the tone like in music.

The mood I am in is relevant and not what I know and I saw. I need to enter that particular state of tension. If I work intensely on a painting, it happens to fall down and sleep at the end. I cannot continue or modify afterwards. What is not expressed from the very beginning is not added later. If I put something on canvas, it is well put. I react by doing the next step and the next step without being concentrated on the aim. My art is about a new creation and not about reaching a goal. I prefer to stay outside a defined style.

Mixed media on paper

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

RFP: Some works are very lively and ardent while some are bathed in gray. What does gray mean for you?

CLH: Gray is white and black. It is about reducing everything to monochrome. In 2006, it happened to me to give up using colours. Moreover, I went to China where I was fascinated by the Chinese graphics. I took a famous course in order to better understand the creation mood, the gradation of colour tones and their equilibrium. Lately, I have returned to colour. One of the reasons relates to my trips to Italy, its light, shadow and colours. As a university lecturer, I used to visit Italy with my students in Civitella d’Agliano.

Rabbit Hunt, Merry Christmas, oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

RFP: How was the international art school in Civitella d’Agliano born ? Could you tell us more about its visitors and its mission?

CLH: It all started when I put the question « why Braşov has no art academy? ». I intended to set up an art summer school there. Unfortunately, this project could not be realised. In 2013, I met a good colleague from Georgia. After we spent a day painting, we decided to found Academia Luciana. The  Academy offers courses and hosts symposiums. In the first year, we had students from all continents, in particular from North America. Currently, the Academy gathered lots of works and this collection “THE BEST OF” will be presented next Saturday, 19.03.2016 at the Tiny Griffon Gallery in Nuremberg.

This year, the students will have the opportunity meet the symposium participants. The landscape in Civitella d Agliano is splendid and ideal for painting, The Academy is open to students looking for guidance and preparing a portfolio for art universities. They receive a certificate of participation from the Academy. They benefit of individual coaching, the teaching staff of the Academy being constantly available during the courses. We also receive participants passionate about learning painting and photography. The symposium is dedicated to professionals.

Après Caravaggio, mixed media on paper

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

RFP: What is the message of the exhibition “Der Lotusstein”  – “The Lotus Stone” with the Tiny Griffon Gallery?

Der Lotusstein, oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

 

CLH: The exhibited works belong to the abstract field. The collection includes 25 paintings and over 20 sculptures, out of which 5 are presented in the gallery. Sculpture is for me 3D painting since it also works with light, shadows and facets. I look at sculpture from a graphic point of view, too.

I started working on the paintings in the collection in 2007 and between 2008 and 2010, I did the sculptures. The sculptures are made of rounded river stones and present floral motives. The stone is the expression of human existence. It is what we carry with us all our life and what is imprinted with scars and experiences. Its significance is about our continuous endeavor to free ourselves from life’s burdens. The association between the lotus and the stone arises from the impermeability of the former and the weight of the latter. It is about our struggle for living and the liberation through art and spirit. Art cannot disappear. As a plastic artist, I intend to give an impulse through colours and lines which anybody can understand. I like to offer the viewer a window to the world I propose.

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

RFP: In 1996, you won the second Danner prize for works on the topic of the cross. What is a cross? What kind of meanings have you found for a cross?

CLH: The paintings which brought me the prize were done in Italy. They were my reaction to the impression the Vatican and its colours exerted on me. When I entered the Vatican for the first time, I felt like in an insectary. I had never seen so many crucifixes in my life before. I created 5 works.

The cross is a very difficult composition for an artist. The cross divides the space in four equal parts and it concentrates everything in the centre. You cannot look to the left or to the right, but only in the centre. This is why physicists considered that the centre of the Universe can be anywhere. I asked myself about how I could build a cross. I began with horizontal layers and I realised that the composition grew vertically without me having to explicitly give this direction. I introduced verticality through vectors and pressure.

I had a special approach to this topic. One of my works, named “Porta Mundo” expresses the idea of Atlas by showing a person who carries another one. Another work I entitled “Apostolic Gymnastic“.

Later, I made crucifixes in the form of T, just as Romans used to do, where the vertical brings pressure on the horizontal.

RFP: Your works were presented in 2007 in Sibiu on the occasion of the European Capital of Culture. In 2021, it is possible that another Romanian city receives this title. What does painting mean for a cultural capital?

CLH : Art in general can bring prosperity thanks to investments made in that city. Concerning Cluj, the eventually new European Capital of Culture, I think the city has lots of potential due to its academy of art. Art brings visibility to a city by attracting interested young visitors who like to travel and meet new cultures. It makes the city vibrant and it provides the opportunity of meeting other local artists or from abroad. It is a great momentum for Romania and Cluj to present themselves to the world through art. Culture defines the identity of a country.

Oil on canvas

© Christian Lucian Hamsea

 

RFP: Which are the new projects you are working on and which is your next exhibition?

CLH: I work on some projects together with Mircea Ardeleanu, percussionist of high professionalism and professor at the Music Conservatory in Cluj. He has over 300 percussion instruments, some of them unconventional. We intend, for example, to stage an opera. In our projects, music transforms painting into projected images. Music is the masculine while my images are the feminine. Music is what puts me in the mood for creation. Depending on what I work on, I like to listen to a specific kind of music, such as classic contemporary music, Bach, Beethoven or flamenco.

⌘  Christian Lucian Hamsea was born in Transylvania, Romania and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. His art work comprises painting, sculpture, graphics, public art, photography and object design. He likes working with creative media and appreciates the diversity of materials. Lecturer at the University Erlangen, Germany and guest lecturer at the State Academy of Arts Tiflis, Georgia, the artist also founded Academia Luciana at Civitella d’Agliano, Italy in 2013. His works are presented in galleries all around the world (Germany, France, Mexico, Romania, Italy, Turkey, Austria, Argentina, Canada and the USA) both in solo and group exhibitions, as well in international art fairs and festivals and public collections.

The Exhibition”Der Lotusstein” can be visited from 19.02. to 16.03.2016 and the best works of Academia Luciana can be seen from 19.03 to 30.03.2016 at the Tiny Griffon Gallery in Nuremberg.

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This article has been selected into the book “Beauty Elegance Creativity – 12 Interviews on the Act of Creation” published by Roxana Florina Popa