The Memory of the Apse 2005

Marin Gherasim made this painting, The Memory of the Apse, using oil on canvas. There’s a kind of layering, like he’s scraping back the image to find something underneath. The image keeps dissolving and reforming. I think about how the red outlines—the architectural forms—appear and disappear into the red ground, pushing forward and receding back, refusing to stay still. The paint is put on thinly in places, in others it’s built up thickly, like the artist is pushing the oil around, searching for the right consistency. Imagine Gherasim standing there, brush in hand, trying to conjure up the essence of this space from memory. What does it mean to remember a space? To rebuild something that exists only in your mind? The act of painting itself becomes a way of figuring this out, like he’s in conversation with painters throughout history, trying to push this old language forward. What emerges is this kind of embodied expression. A feeling. Ambiguity. And openness.