This sculpture is part of a series of sculptures that take sequences from the narrative context of legends of ancient Greek civilization and sculpt the result of my imagination in a new way of seeing in the modern era, different, sometimes suggesting movement in the process of metamorphosis.
The ancient Greeks understood that all human dramas revolve around the ubiquitous and inevitable experience of loss. Greek mythology revolves around this essential paradox of human life.
Our time is limited, our control is limited and from this is born the great emotion of human existence. We love intensely, because we know that our mastery is weak.
The love story of Orpheus and Eurydice exemplifies this principle in all its heartbreaking beauty.
According to legend, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, dies at their wedding being bitten by a snake. Orpheus prays to the gods to allow him to save her, descending into hell to bring Eurydice back to life.
The gods allow him to try, but on one condition - he does not have to look back at his wife who is following him. Orpheus respected this condition until the threshold of hell; but when he was ready to cross the fatal frontier, driven by the fear and impatience of love, he looked back. At that moment, the gods are faithful to their cruel promise, and Eurydice is pulled back into darkness and thus loses his wife a second time.
The despair caused by the final loss of Eurydice made Orpheus despise and insult the women of Thrace. Eventually, exasperated, they retaliated by tearing him to pieces, prey to the ecstasy specific to bahic orgies.
After his death, the shadow of Orpheus descends underground, into hell, he finds Eurydice, “Then lovingly they wandered side by side/ or he would follow when she chose to lead/ or at another time he walked in front/ looking back, safely,—at Eurydice.”, (Ovid, in "Metamorphoses", the eleventh book).
This last passage is the theme of my sculpture: when the shadow of Orpheus turns his head and looks at Eurydice without fear because the gods could no longer punish him.
 I sculpted the two characters in unusual shapes because they are both in a dreamlike, unreal environment, in eternity, he is a shadow and she is an illusion. I sculpted the lower half of Orpheus in bas-relief, going through the strange place of hell and the upper part of the body in three dimensions.  I sculpted Eurydice with her body shape in the negative.


The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice

Power is as fleeting as life, this is the message of my sculpture. Whoever climbs the steep steps of the power tower to reach the top and settles in the seat of power, cheers with the sweet taste of victory and becomes a lone wolf. 
The processes of personalization of power have deep roots and political, psychological and cultural motives that impose the cult of personality, as it was in Romania, my country, during Ceausescu's time.
It has the feeling that it is taking root but they do not find the juice necessary for durability and the leader's chair is in a precarious position, ready to collapse at any time.
According to Maslow, “power based on forcing, coercion and fear has a limit, it forces man to be obedient, but it immobilizes him, removes him, alienates him from the interests and goals that should be achieved, makes him think of revenge, decreases productivity, job satisfaction.”
 These consequences dig deep into the root of power that inevitably collapses.


“The allegory of power”

The two caryatids brought to the primary humanoid stage, kneeling, trapped in the vise of horror, are isolated and frightened by the pandemic wearing masks.
The two wooden boards at the bottom and top are made of beech and give weight and pressure on the two caryatids
  Only the eyes speak, it is the metaphor of our times.
The gaps between the two bodies, below the chin and above the knees, form two hearts with the tips together, emptied of feelings, forming an hourglass through which time flows, waiting for better times. So I sculpted the air.
In the supporting pedestal I integrated the earth globe, because this pandemic quickly and unexpectedly surprised the whole world.


“Pandemic memories”

Water - a metaphor for life, beauty, catastrophes, uncontrollable force, the passage of time, death.
As a child, I was impressed by the force of the swirling water, which, following the rapid summer rains, filled the riverbeds of dry springs to the brim, bringing stone cliffs of impressive sizes or tree trunks.
Water, the primary necessity without which life, flora and fauna, cannot exist, becomes strong under the influence of gravity.
The entire earth is shaped by the erosive force of rainwater that gradually removes successive layers of the surface, leaving behind areas of erosion-resistant rocks that appear as isolated rocks or mountains.


“Hydro erosion”

The prayer is our direct connection with heaven because no matter how complicated the technological achievements, they can be deciphered analytically - and, after all, how simplistic they are compared to the miracle of the complexity of living organisms or the cosmic universe and its movements!

In the construction of prayer I focused on the fact that prayer itself has nothing to do with age or gender, it is pure spirit and it exists within us.
 I structured my sculpture on three distinct elements: the head bowed before the divinity, with the chin on the chest so that the face is indistinguishable, folded hands in prayer (mudra of enlightenment) and the kneeling as a sign of humbleness. 


“Prayer”

 I sculpted in marble the moment of metamorphosis, as described by the great poet Ovid, who lived the last years of his life in Romania at Tomis ((Constanta today), being forcibly exiled from Rome in the year 8 AD and was buried approx. 9 years later in the same locality. .
 The moral of my sculpture: eternal beauty, found exclusively in art.
I sculpted the moment of the metamorphosis, setting in motion Galatea’s silhouette, abandoning the eternal condition in favor of the perishable.
Detachment of the statue to awakening to life leaving the body in the negative, revealing the sequence of movement from the right position of the statue to the downward position on the pedestal, both in front and behind the sculpture. I gave the free spaces meanings of stihii and centrifugal coverage, to suggest movement, with the appearance of a disorder assumed to contradict the static attitude of classicism, while the naked silhouette of Galatea benefits from retained details vaguely reminiscent of the classical manner.
 At the top of the sculpture, in front, I carved the negative mark of the hand of the goddess Aphrodite that gave life to the statue. The features of Galatea's face are vague, without details.
I simply sculpted Pygmalion, without clothing details, I gave importance to the position of the body, after long hesitations between several variants and the facial expression is amazement and wonder for the miracle that took place. His face is slightly caricatured, expressive, specific to the contemporary style.


“Pygmalion & Galateea - Metamorphosis”

In some of my sculptures I take the narrative context of some legends from the civilization of ancient Greece and place them in different contexts, suggesting movement in metamorphosis, to create completely new meanings and evoke completely different emotions, a way of seeing again in the era modern.
 The message conveyed through my sculpture is about the skilful, industrious and sensitive but at the same time strong woman, qualities that have remained eternal.
The message can also be read in another key: as a parable about the power of art and the secular antagonism between creativity and authority. Or about commercial competition, where the status of winner is the privilege only of the great and powerful, a dominant mechanism that has not changed from ancient civilization to the new contemporary gods of the era of globalization (large corporations).
 In my sculpture, I created the moment of the metamorphosis of the young girl Arachne, by reducing her body, becoming a spider with a big belly from which she draws the thread (Poet Ovid).
In ancient Greek legend, the world's first spider was born out of a woman's pride.
 The goddess Minerva (Athens, in the civilization of ancient Greece) was recognized as the most skilled weaver but a young girl, Arachne, surpassed her, although this girl "Neither by rank or nation is famous, but by skill" (Poet Ovid) .
 In the competition between the two, the fabric of Athens was predictably large: a scene of Olympus and a tribute to the glory of the gods.
 The canvas of the young girl Arachne is more beautiful, she surpassed the goddess in the craft, but in her canvas she described the gods as carnal beings whose whims, passions and petty jealousies create suffering in the lives of mortals.
 In revenge, the goddess Minerva punished the young girl Aracne, tore her fabric and hit her forehead three or four times with a shuttle.
 Arachne tried to hang herself but Minerva saves her by telling her "She lives, but still hanged" and sprinkles her with Hecatean poison (a herb of the goddess of the Hecate spells) and metamorphoses her into a spider to weave into eternity.


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Stefanoiu Vasile