Solastalgia is the expression of concern about climate change. It represents the anxiety of the present, it signals immediate action and thus it stands in opposition – despite the phonetic resemblances – to nostalgia, which longs for the past and the distant. We live, it is said, in times of crisis, due to the problematic management of resources, of pollution, of the waste and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.  

Daniel Roșca’s exhibition not only resonates with these urgencies, but it overlaps with them to the point of identification. In fact, the artist takes it personally, as he is convinced that there is a synergistic interaction between planetary and personal well-being. Or the lack of them. A world in crisis means a state of indignation, helplessness and guilt. Of ecological anxiety. Or, in other words, a solastalgia.

Daniel Roșca operates with this concept mainly in the field of painting, although conceived in an installationist manner. A telluric, material, climatic painting, which seems to be in a process of full transformation. His painting, however, is not parietal, but it is conceived asexpanding, changing topographies, occupying the entire space of the gallery. A painting emerging from its flatness in the form of lightboxes, where disturbing flows of color shine through the surface, or reflections in water that create a purer secondary reality. Then, there isthe sound installation where liquid, visual objects speak about water as an essentialcomponent, the circulatory system of everything alive, to which is added the video where the images tell an absurd story about the encounter between a fragile body and the ever-unstable nature.

An exhibition that reflects an active, not a contemplative attitude, an exhibition which becomes a manifesto about emotion and involvement, about protection and belonging. About our state of solastalgia.