Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and I
“When I decided to explore Cézanne’s innovative methods, the major problem I encountered was that he had numerous styles across his career, or even within a given phase. Therefore my work has ended up going in several directions as well, often borrowing formalist or conceptual aspects from one or more paintings or even drawings of Cézanne. At this point I am wondering whether I need to arrive at one specific style or formalist language, or whether I should continue investigating the concepts of the modernist master, taking them to places unknown to myself. Those places, I hope, will allow the erasure of the boundaries between the genres of landscape and portraiture. I hope my paintings will convey to the viewer the all-too-obvious fact that the visual experience of our faces and backs can never be realized directly, while our perception of nature appears to be fully evident. Except that the latter too has its complexities and dilemmas within our senses and apprehension.”
—Carmen Marin, December 2021
Green in L’Estaque/Olive in Obor (To Paul Cézanne)
March 2022
Acrylic on linen
28 by 24 inches (70 by 60 cm)
Without Boulder (To Paul Cézanne)
March 2022
Acrylic on linen
24 by 20 inches (60 by 50 cm)
Rumination
December 2021
Acrylic on linen
35 by 24 inches (90 by 60 cm)
Private collection, Aix-en-Provence, France.
Mont Sainte-Victoire Mauve (Inextricable)
November 2022
Acrylic on linen
24 by 32 inches (60 by 80 cm)
Among the Chairs
April 2022
Acrylic on linen
26 by 20 inches (66 by 50 cm)
Private collection, Bucharest, Romania.
“I open my eyes on to my table, and my consciousness is flooded with colour and confused reflections; it is hardly distinguishable from what is offered to it; it spreads out, through its accompanying body, into the spectacle which so far is not a spectacle of anything. Suddenly, I start to focus my eyes on the table which is not yet there, I begin to look into the distance even while there is as yet no depth, my body centers itself on an object which is still only potential, and so disposes its sensitive surfaces as to make it a present reality.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (1945), trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 239.
Rumination, Doubt
October 2021
Acrylic on linen
28 by 24 inches (70 by 60 cm)
Private collection, Atlanta, United States.
Misanthropy and Cézanne's Patches
November 2022
Acrylic on linen
24 by 32 inches (60 by 80 cm)
Apprehensive (Blue with Shades of Green)
December 2022
Acrylic on linen
35 by 28 inches (90 by 70 cm)
Parcul Operei (Emil Cioran)
[Opera Park (For Romanian philosopher and essayist Emil Cioran)]
January 2023
Acrylic on linen
30 by 20 inches (75 by 51 cm)
“As I feel I have made more of a shift in the direction of abstraction within the above painting Apprehensive (Blue with Shades of Green), I intend to title my subsequent exhibition Toward the Primordial.
I believe the surface of the canvas has the potential to manifest the interwoven aspects of our perception of the world, overturning the linguistic dichotomies of figuration and abstraction, the organic and inorganic, self and other. While dichotomy is an essential point of departure for grasping and rationalizing our realities, it is necessary to overstep the limitations of that logic. Painting is one means of doing so.”
—Carmen Marin, December 2022
Blue and Green (After Munch)
February 2023
Acrylic on linen
35 by 47 inches (90 by 120 cm)
Essai (For Paul Cézanne)
June 2023
Acrylic on linen
39 ⅜ by 47 ¼ inches (100 by 120 cm)