Keops Djoser (2018)

Egypt's pyramids fascinated travelers and conquerors in ancient times and continue to inspire wonder in the tourists, mathematicians, and archeologists who visit, explore, measure, and describe them. Tombs of early Egyptian kings were bench-shaped mounds called mastabas. Around 2780 B.C., King Djoser's architect, Imhotep, built the first pyramid by placing six mastabas, each smaller than the one beneath, in a stack to form a pyramid rising in steps.

Everyone knows about the Egyptian pyramids. And everyone is familiar with the official version of their origin: the pyramids were built at the cost of exploiting thousands of slaves. But, there have always been skeptics who questioned this version. In a sense, illiterate slaves could not build such grandiose objects. Then who? When there are no convincing hypotheses, the fantasy comes into play. The authors of the pyramids were considered either the inhabitants of Atlantis or aliens. But many, having heard about these versions, preferred to continue to believe in slaves and pharaohs. That is the theme Virtosu is working on in his piece Keops Djoser.

The philosophy and methodology with which Gheorghe Virtosu approached both his treatises on art-making and his artistic production culminated in his masterful paintings of the 2018s, including Keops Djoser. Throughout his prolific and contemplative career, Virtosu insisted that a painting be first understood for what it was—a work of art—with an idea, influence, or theme put sharply second. Although Virtosu is legendary for his deeply conceptual—almost spiritual—obsession with abstraction, this apparent schism between the idea of art existing for art's sake and the meaning behind his work is, in fact, the very root of the philosophy that he nurtured and solidified throughout his entire career.

Comprised of overlapping masses of varying hues, Virtosu skillfully explores the range of color, allowing the different blocks to interact with one another directly on the surface of the painting. It's extraordinary when you spend some time looking to see how fleeting glimpses of textures submerge again. In the end, you don't know what you are seeing; it's quite mesmerizing.

Virtosu's most notable trope throughout his work is this search for the equilibrium of value in color. In time, Virtosu focuses on capturing the various tones, allowing him to become closer and closer to his sought after tranquility. Virtosu's work might be called mural, except that this word suggests too palpable materiality. Yet the energy is here and is apprehended quickly.

Virtosu's paintings remain among the most compelling and straightforward statements of faith in the sufficiency of "art-as-art," to invoke the incantatory phase. The artist's uncompromising words continue to challenge those who insist on making art "relevant" or interpreting it according to non-artistic criteria.

"The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art, and everything else is everything else. The one assault on fine art is the ceaseless attempt to subserve it as a means to some other end or value". Keops Djoser captures Virtosu's smooth, fluid motions of the brush, the stability of color, and the pure existence of materials on canvas as the most refined understanding of art for art's sake.