Rose of Nothingness, 2015

Basel 2019

Installation

Water, black dye, sprinklers system, water basin

550.0 x 1100.0 x 300.0 (cm)

216.5 x 433.1 x 118.1 (inch)

Belu-Simion Fainaru’s work Rose of Nothingness – realized for the first time in 2015 at Galeria Plan B in Berlin and exhibited the same year at the MAK Museum in Vienna – relates to the poems of Paul Celan that deal with the Kabbalah and the concept of nothingness. The black dripping liquid refers to the image of the black milk, which appears in Celan’s poem Fugue of Death as a recurring theme: ‘Fugue of Death Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night we drink it and drink it.’ While constructing layers of meaning that touch upon Jewish-Romanian history, text, and issues of identity and territory, the work of Fainaru sensitively and deeply addresses universal human themes. Like Celan, Fainaru combines contrasts to create a rich symbolic reality derived from the past and the present, from the sacred and the profane, from the soul and the body.