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Daniel Enkaoua
2019
Enkaoua paints spacious paintings. Almost always depicting one figure in short brushstrokes, fast, rich. The background greyish purple wall, containing the forming rhythm of the figure. The basic tension of the paintings stems from the brushstrokes’ will to autonomy, like the stains of Cezanne or Uglow; yet the painting in its completeness strives toward entropy, like a Turner landscape.
In Enkaoua’s painting, nothing is one thing. Every painterly event is an encounter that gains its value and meaning from its surroundings. It is yellow in relation to grey, which is purple in relation to orange, and so on.
Poetry books are full of love poems, yet only a few “love paintings” are found in museums. Enkaoua’s paintings are love paintings. The painter’s love is directed at that essence in his loved ones, which will persist in them even after every bodily cell of theirs is replaced.
(Essay by Jonathan Hirschfeld).
