Portrait of D. Juns/H'art Gallery

What happens when you stumble into a room populated by couples wandering, posing, but unaware of being inside the frame of a picture? Donald Simionoiu makes an art where a lot of things happen in the background. The background is not a place for still lives and unnecessary objects. The background is the wallpaper of rooms where the dynamic of couples takes place.

 

It was a bad idea to trust the colors and transpositions that deploy members of the so-called middle class. The colored and orderly image of the middle class draws on patriotic propaganda paintings, interested in the nuclear family and young common couples. The origin of the medium income family blends the pop-culture rhetoric of a sagrada familia with recently bleached hair. Mother Marilyn and child is a part of the domestic Holy Family. In a visually sparse style, Donald Simionoiu lets the clothes talk about the worker’s old blue shirt, and about the flower in his hand. The worker wears a blue collar and his job description is nameless – he provides services.

 

But the couple can be also depicted as the new class of business people, dragging behind special political claims. Their public and private life is one and the same, and this is visible in the bright red of their Versace shirts. Her eyes linger somewhere outside the existence led on the comfortable armchair. The cat walks on the frame. And the frame is the world of new salon habits, of the luxurious prosperity adorning the walls. Donald Simionoiu is letting the social wallpaper shine.

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Ștefan Tiron