Thinker

Here is a thinking that is within limits, but dignified and upright.

We see a human figure trapped between massive geometric volumes. The head appears partially, as if looking from inside the stone, suggesting, as it were, that thought is not free, but constrained, forced to manifest itself in a limited space. It is the thought of contemporary man, trapped between rules, structures, systems.

We distinguish, in Damian's Thinker, rather an inner face. The face is not frontal, it does not communicate directly with the viewer. It is an inner, silent, introspective thought. It does not seek applause, but meaning.

The expression of the gaze is calm, but it does not express suffering but concentration.

The sculpture rises on a stable vertical axis, showing that the Thinker from Ungheni is not collapsed, but stands upright, even if limited. There is, in this case, an ethic of resistance, with the help of which the artist wants to tell us that to think means to remain vertical and dignified.