Alex Manea 

TEXT:

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     In Last Lines, I confront one of the most intimate forms of human expression: the final written words left behind at the threshold between presence and absence. This series engages with suicide notes authored by artists and other publicly known figures, texts that exist simultaneously as deeply personal documents and as cultural artifacts shaped by their inevitable public circulation.

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     I am drawn to these writings because of the paradox they embody. Composed in moments of extreme vulnerability, they are not intended as artworks, yet many possess a striking clarity, restraint, or poetic intensity. They function as final acts of communication, statements that cannot be revised, contextualized, or answered. This irreversibility is central to my interest in them and forms the conceptual foundation of the series.

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     Rather than reproducing these texts as archival material, I recontextualize them through form and process. Each work takes the shape of a notebook page, a format closely associated with private thought, drafting, and confession. I construct these pages manually using a 3D printing pen, deliberately rejecting mechanical uniformity. The resulting irregularities, pauses, and visible imperfections echo the fragility and hesitation embedded in the words themselves, while preserving the trace of the hand behind the gesture.

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     The choice of plastic filament as a medium introduces a deliberate contradiction. Synthetic, durable, and resistant to decay, the material stands in sharp contrast to the emotional instability and finality contained within the texts. This tension between the endurance of matter and the vulnerability of human life occupies a central place in the series. The handwritten lines, uneven and exposed, assert a human presence within a material that is otherwise impersonal and enduring.

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     I do not approach these notes as narratives to be explained or tragedies to be resolved. They are presented as fragments, condensed expressions that function simultaneously as closures and openings. They mark an end, yet they continue to generate meaning beyond their original moment, existing in a suspended ethical and emotional space. My intention is not to interpret or justify these texts, but to allow them to remain unresolved and present.

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     Through Last Lines, I aim to reclaim these writings as acts of communication rather than remnants of disappearance. By treating them as visual and conceptual objects, I acknowledge their linguistic and expressive weight while resisting sensationalism or romanticization. The series does not seek to aestheticize despair, but to recognize the profound human need to articulate experience, even when language itself reaches its limit.

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     Ultimately, this work is less about death than about the necessity of expression. It considers writing as a final assertion of presence, a gesture that insists on being seen and read. By bringing these words into the space of contemporary art, I invite reflection on vulnerability, authorship, and the enduring complexity of the human impulse to communicate.