Suzana Dan “ Animal Touch"
Suzana Dan loves dogs. That's the first thing you notice when you enter the exhibition. The second cultural reflex is to appreciate the chromatic exuberance. It feels like calypso songs mixed with a lot of Henri Rousseau and a dash of German expressionism. As it always happens, the “wonderful modernist myth of originality beyond any influences is not possible.
"Animal touch" has two parts: the soft touch is located in the first room and the hard touch in the second.
All that you see in the first room is angelic (Canine Eden, Mesieur le General), ideal (Ecce Canis I and II, Knut von Asthma)“ in a peculiar way “ or simply domestic or picturesque (Broad perspective I, Nothing New). Knut von Asthma is Suzana's asthmatic dog, enjoying an aesthetic experience along with three birds in Hanging. In Ecce canis II and I we see two amusing ways in which God delivers on the how-to-advertise-an-ideal-dog creative brief. In the meantime, we get a glimpse of the canine way of imagining heaven (Canine Eden) with some "ecstatic" tones of magenta. The first room is about the bright side of dog behavior. The first painting called Broad perspective makes the transition to the next room. It's an ambiguous title with a delicious twist of humor. With everything going so well, we are in for a surprise. The second room focuses on the "close encounter" between dogs and humans and their consequences. Canine neurosis and Canine psychosis depict two of those consequences. The final touch is the two by two meter painting called Ten minutes before the midday sleep on the shores of Seine. It's a clever reference to one of the first scandalous paintings (obviously not by our standards) in the Modern History of Art “Les Demoiselles at the shores of the Seine by G. Courbet". It's also a huge, paralyzing erotic encounter ten minutes before the calm sleep in Courbet's painting. Those two women are clearly doing something scandalous though we cannot specifically say what. They produce a yellow-greenish light in a field full of amaryllis. It's a glimpse of the second before the apocalyptic. In front of the painting rests a defeated Michelangelo slave who had a facelift. The title also refers to the famous realistic painting Bonjour Monsieur Courbet.
As you can see, one doesn't get bored with Suzana Dan. In "Animal touch" she boldly shows us how we can still enjoy an art exhibition: dogs, colors and, for the final course - ambiguous erotism. (Dan Popescu)
