
Sebastian Nasta
I look absorbed in everything around me, because I am fascinated by the world of detail, that world over which time has no influence. The miniature universe of detail assumes the courage to face time and space, placing itself in a frame that allows me to recreate it in each of my canvases. How many paintings, so many genesis. This is what I do in my work:
I reiterate the genesis of detail, which is always different. Sober or haughty eyes, shy or sensual lips, sunken pores, shallow or deep wrinkles, scattered hair, freckles, delicate or deceptive moles, all these small details, often forgotten or covered, come to life under my brush to say the story of man, always different, unique and distinct.
The characters are wrapped in material elements of different textures, forcibly introduced into my painting to potentiate the discrepancy between natural and artificial. In recent years, first aid foil has become a defining element in my work, and its recurrence is explained by the excessive tendency of man to defend himself. Because the human being is increasingly vulnerable and the means of defense are increasingly precarious, we have introduced gold foil as a symbol of protection, designed to illustrate the illusory defense that man enjoys, regardless of culture or society.
In addition, the portraits covered with aluminum foil hide a personal significance, because I find myself in them in the proper sense, by the fact that my image is reflected in the foil.
My reflection in gold foil makes each portrait, in fact, a self-portrait, obviously a decomposed one, because the shapes of my face are distorted, and the amalgam of colors turns the figurative into the non-figurative.
From a distance, the viewer can observe the fine details of my work, but as he approaches, he enters that microcosm in which the details come together until dissolved in brushstrokes.
I discovered the fascination for detail from the first years spent in my grandparents’ village, where the teacher strengthened my conviction that painting is another form of existence. Later, I graduated from the “Sabin Drăgoi” art high school in Arad, Romania, and continued my studies at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. I exhibited in Austria, Germany, France and Romania, but my works have also reached private collections in Los Angeles.
Currently, I live and paint in Cluj-Napoca, trying to continuously improve.