The new paintings of Aida Tomescu take many of their titles from the composer Olivier Messiaen and whilst she is appropriately reluctant to see her works as anything other than the resolution of their own demands and desires, the ecumenical approach that Messiaen took to music, from cultures outside of the western canon – Hindu rhythms and Japanese music for example, demonstrate something that is fundamental to Tomescu’s mature painting.

More than ever before Tomescu’s paintings reject the monotheism and orthodoxies of the western canon – less so the art history that has always been the foundation of her passion and shapes an essential understanding of painting, but her increasing use of colour as a profound element, something Messiaen would’ve assented to, and critically the relationships that exist between time and music, between time and painting and between colour and sound.

The installation of Messiaen in the new FOX JENSEN/SYDNEY will allow for the presentation of Tomescu’s work with appropriate scale and generosity. Each panel that Tomescu paints is made at full reach. This calibration to body feels crucial to the works capacity to invite attention and understanding through sensation as much as through cognition.

Image: Aida Tomescu, Messiaen III, 2025, oil on belgian linen, 200 x 306cm