L'Enlevement de Proserpine 1985

This is Nicolae Maniu's ‘The Abduction of Proserpina’, and it's a painting that really messes with your perception. You can see the artist working with multiple layers and playing with illusion. The figures inside the gold frame look like they're emerging from the darkness. Look closely at the muscular arm, the pained faces and imagine what it might have been like for Maniu to build up those tonal contrasts, dragging the light across those forms. The artist has captured the drama of Baroque painting, not only in the scene he depicts, but in the dynamics of the composition and the interplay of depth, shadow, and light. Maniu’s use of hyperrealism almost makes the sculpture seem to leap out. It reminds me how artists are constantly pulling from art history and reinterpreting it in their own way. Maniu takes up the grand themes of myth and abduction, but through the lens of a painting. That's where the real abduction takes place: he's stealing from the past to make something new.