Alexander
Blu
Deep confrontational beauty
Alexander Blu is an emerging European painter based in Groningen and Brussels. Within a period of only 3 years Blu has managed to attain a maturity of thought and technique that is astounding, particularly when comparing his early works and his more recent accomplishments. The imagery of his paintings is extremely powerful and combines a subtlety of colour choice with dark backgrounds (e.g. “Despondency”, 2021) that evokes qualities of 17th century religious art whilst remaining firmly rooted in the present and without the taint of imitation. The maturing process of his oeuvre can be observed in his two studies on the Biblical theme of Judith’s beheading of Holofernes from 2020 and 2021. Whilst the former is reminiscent of 1990s street art the latter shows a maturity in the study of facial expressions that is astounding and creates a balance between overt theme of the bloody act with the deeper and covert relational reversal of female victimhood. Blu plays with subtleties of colour intensity, light/darkness and brush-stroke that seek a balance between the intensity of contrast between the “in-the face” and the subliminal message of his works. Both in his Judith studies and in his collaborative work “War in Heaven” there is a wonderful transposition between the received iconography of traditional religious art with human figures of the present. It is to be desired that Alexander Blu will continue to make such evident strides in the maturing of his already discernible individual style and the quality of equilibrium between artistic technique and thoughtful imagery in his developing career.
Review by André Florin Wyss
MA Euroculture, MTheol
Through a questing return to figurative art and archetypal symbolism: as the storm of progress rages above, Blu digs deeper into the past, and a space of renewal opens up, where timeless questions of the heart may meet the march of modern life that overtakes us daily: art is what we do, and that doing renews and redefines itself.
Our age is a confusion of media, a chaos of social signals and a hustle culture. Our art is trendy, often abstract. And yet, when the storm rages, returning to the timeless questions of the past is the strongest statement one can make. Through Blu's work, he engages directly with troubling questions of our time: questions that we only entertain obliquely, indirectly.
Blu’s work sits on the fault lines of a conscious line of questioning: we often see work that asks complicated questions from a position of comfort. He invites the viewer to ask simple questions from a position of discomfort.
Finding a sense of congruity with the saying “Het blood kruipt wear het niet gaan kan”, his work reflects a pervasive ilk of the nature of being.