Note to Claudia,
Since we decided to show both the new paintings from this summer alongside last year's work, I think the best approach is to regard it as a process piece, i.e., all pieces are very personal, derived from diary entries,, bla bla bla. Excuse me if I start write in bullets or repeat something.
I believe the safest way to fully embrace this voyage through the seemingly incoherent is to think of the first paintings as beggining of cognition or image ignition process
Like when you’re a child, and you push your hands over closed eyelids; the brain starts looking for a light source and sees these purple and green-hued lightning flashes turning into something ornamental and back to lightning in small portions of a second.
Additionally, the purple painting is based on an X-ray of my grandmother's head in late stages of dementia.
I could talk about how that portion of private history affects the work, but I’m feeling a bit impatient with having to explain myself rn.
Regarding process, focus on the transition from something that is much a stain—a sort of amalgamation of intense pains and soft paints combined with what I now regard as only the ramblings of a madman—through time becomes more refined and, in many regards, reproduces the same story over and over. (Okay, I lost it here, but I’ll leave it since it might inspire something.)
The point being, the paintings have a sort of occult self-healing property; as if we regard painting as the manipulation of pigment stains within a puddle on a plane, the same can be said for the human. Or?
Primal (stain) out da womb; screaming; dripping >>>>> nonsensical recollection; coming to; learning the walk (there's very little border between the "I" and the surrounding world) > puppet theatre; man as machine and beyond, THE WORK...
**Things I've been reading while birthing these paintings
- In Search of the Miraculous (there's a Živko Nikolić film on YouTube in English that encapsulates the whole book in 40 minutes)
- A Light on the Path by Mabel Collins (it's about 70 pages and gives sometimes
- Branko Miljković’s Orphic Heritage (I think I have it translated somewhere)
- Anne Sexton’s “You, Doctor Martin”( on loop)
**Soundtracks
- Chet Baker on Poetry
- Big Fun
- Maiden Voyage
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