EA16 02 Mihai Grecu - Under the Centipede Sun I Animation Hagenberg

Mihai Grecu makes what would be defined as non-narrative short films mixing 3D simulation techniques with real footage. Yet definitions cannot exist in the universe created by those films. Grecu blends images of global challenges with images of existential uncertainties into space where time passes as for a fly paralyzed in a spider’s web. This view is trying to hold on to reality slipping away differently in every facet. What it catches is hyper real, up to every scale of a fish swimming in the air (Glucose), or every drop of a rain fallen upside down (Coagulate). The hyper real breaks the rational observation delicately enough not to proclaim what is seen a fantasy, but to promote it to a parallel present, an unknown twin of the reality we used to believe was the only one. With just one slight difference, such as North Korea possible to be flooded like Atlantis (The Reflection of Power), or raspberry jam possible to pollute a big river (Exland). Absurdity makes these landscapes even more believable – because lies are logical, while the nature takes chances. The excessive images of liquids (oil, water, syrup), fire and smoke in the films play with the anxious feeling that somehow nature's sublime forces were distorted and hacked into an unknown reality. Those matters also represent the infinite number of nature’s varieties, as they are always similar and never the same. People say they can look at water or fire forever, which, after all, corresponds with the pace of time in Grecu’s films.