Bill Clinton (2015)

Vîrtosu’s paintings dating back to 2015 enhance a personal effort of departure from conventional influences, the ones which every human being is meant to inherit from their ancestors. Although deeply rooted in the land of his origins, the artist seizes an opportunity of investigation – what does it imply to take on the responsibility of a nation in terms of ancestry?

Bill Clinton, former president of the United States during what is now called the longest period of peacetime economic expansion, but also the second president to be impeached, was very involved in tying up a relationship with Yeltsin during the 90s, a period of decay and inevitable change. Despite the turn of events, of switching up “traditions”, of hoping to renounce communism for democracy, aiming in other words for an utopic scenario of welfare in any case, Clinton and his team found solutions through his fiscal conservatism for the betterment of his home country. One to propose an image of the traditional family, but also dealing with personal scandals that affected his image, the controversies surrounding his persona and later on that of his wife’s involvement in the presidential elections put forward the necessity of adaptability for “survival” on the public scene. Vîrtosu points out with thick passages of jubilant orange and intense purple that convene with rich, buttery sections of cream and white the permutations of Clinton and his family’s, as he does not appear and persevere only as an individual, but in relation to those surrounding him. Alteration and reconfiguration become the characteristics that make Clinton singular in both life and pictorial scene. His portrait magnifies their way of being in the world and this renouncement of realism is, ironically, more true to his nature.