Painting

The Vienna-based artist and academic Mariella Greil wrote in her book Encountering a bare body: “I aim at articulating the body as bare immanence at the horizon of a still forming, unpredetermined encounter, the singular plural we, always in negotiation with the other and the world we live in.” Her book, which draws on philosophical, biopolitical, and ethical discourses relevant to the appearance of bare bodies in choreography, focuses on performing arts, but I find those concepts relevant to my work, especially as its roots stem from my earlier experience of working in theatre. The idea of the bare body becoming axiomatic in respect to the value and dignity of being human, is a starting point for further exploration. At the same time, the series is also inspired by a recent trip to Japan and the Japanese art of calligraphy and sumi-e works. Japanese calligraphic writing is valued in the same way as paintings yet treated as something more than art -- a philosophy expressed through a careful configuration of brush strokes, which combines rhythm, emotion, aesthetic, and spirituality. The sumi-e art, which was introduced to Japan in the 14th century during the Muromachi period by Zen Buddhists follows the same principle as Buddhism, where in order to express reality, one needs to reduce it to its purest form. In these works I am therefore focusing purely on the line and brush strokes, with the intention of reaching a delicate balance of the opposites: on one hand, to maintain the purity of sketching where untamed energy is spontaneously and authentically expressed, and on the other hand, to perform a mindful and careful action of making the marks come together in a powerful way. At the centre of the semi-spontaneous, semi-controlled expression is the body. On either side: the artist and the viewer. And it is this space in between that interests me most, because where a bare body is present between the artist and a viewer we encounter what Greil calls “the sensitive relations and complicated play with displacements of desires and deferrals of vulnerabilities traded between bodies”.