Cristian Gheorghiu's (aka ‘SMEAR’) ‘Run with the Hunted’ is a tribute to Charles Bukowski (see the poem that inspired the title at the end of this post). From the press materials:
RUN WITH THE HUNTED refers to Bukowski's poem "My Doom Smiles At Me." Gheorghiu's visceral, highly personal style of painting emulates the messy workings of the total-information age, layering forms and images with powerful, slashing brush strokes of rhythmic, unifying admixtures and improvised, frenzied lines of brilliant color. Wrestling with ways to make a mark despite the dismaying potency of mediated imagery, Gheorghiu paints in two or more styles at once -- often in the same painting, denying the absolute rightness of any canon of beauty or truth, scavenging and mingling imagery as promiscuously as the media. Picking and adding elements from his environment, Gheorghiu works the surfaces over with paint in the spontaneous gestural language of action painting.
there’s no other way:
8 or ten poems a
night.
in the sink
behind me are dishes
that haven’t been
washed in 2
weeks.
the sheets need
changing
and the bed is
unmade.
half the lights are
burned-out here.
it gets darker
and darker
(I have replacement
bulbs but can’t get them
out of their cardboard
wrapper.) Despite my
dirty shorts in the
bathtub
and the rest of my dirty
laundry on the
bedroom floor,
they haven’t
come for me yet
with their badges and their rules and their
numb ears. oh, them
and their caprice!
like the fox
I run with the hunted and
if I’m not the happiest
man on earth I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.
-Charles Bukowsi
For more photos of this event, visit Erwin Recinos on Flickr.
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