In The Mood for Love
2020

Evolving from earlier works focused on female and male nudes, Anca Stefanescu’s imagery still includes the human contour. The visual language elevates flat figurative shapes into abstraction, through a contrasting approach to surface, with an emphasis on the expressive treatment of colours. The merger of abstraction and figuration is the challenging process Anca Stefanescu develops in her visual language alternating the gestural brush movement, strokes or mark-making and the impression of spontaneity with flat, solid colourful geometric shapes. The compositions represent deep and personal narratives, speaking of intimate experiences and subjects such as love, gender and the human beliefs that create the experiential reality. The series directly references the physical and emotional experience of falling in love and accepting the feeling. The title was inspired by Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love” movie and the artist’s life.
‘I have created the ‘In the Mood for Love’ series of profile portraits, united with a single kiss, based on my experience of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. I felt fragile and I allowed my vulnerability to find expression. I don’t equate being vulnerable with being weak but with being open to allow the reality to unfold naturally…making the unknown my friend. I painted a small size series of portraits using paper as support and acrylic as a medium. Paper works particularly well for evoking fragility and delicacy and resonated with the feminine part that I had constantly forsaken…yet this particular cotton paper I used has a rough, unbreakable aspect that I associated with masculine attributes.
We are in a relationship in the process, dividing and uniting with our opposite. The two sexes are metaphysically equal yet creatively opposite, divided from and united with each other, carrying out the purpose of creation. Lovers don't notice their surroundings, the pace of repetition or the momentum. Instinct and intuition, whispered emotions, one person in the other's mind, the melting of time and space. Filled by desires the spaces are never empty or meaningless, it is our love that permeates them.’
Notes on ‘In the Mood for Love, 2020