Collagen
Eröffnung: Donnerstag, 21. Juli 2 011, 19 Uhr
GRAZ KUNST
Sporgasse 20, A- 8 010 Graz
Ausstellungsdauer: 22.7.- 14.8.2011
Ever Seeing is a record of lament… because it is grief over the humanity of the hardened heart; deferred hopes of reconciliation,frustrated intimacy inter-between human hearts and their Father.
Artist Statemant:
„Scorning the pomp of must and shall
My father moved through dooms of feel;…“
e.e. Cummings
I’m sitting in my studio now, and as long as I think of you and what you will think, I belong to you
and so does my voice. I have allowed others, circumstances, and fears tremendous power over
me. It has given me leave to not assert or proclaim anything that is not combed through, edited
or analyzed. The slow liberation from this has been so gradual it takes stillness to see it. Death
and release of control hold such a significant role in living beyond my and our limited conceptive
apparatuses. I have to express how exciting hearing my own breathing has become. When it
is silent, I can hear it, and I fill my lungs thinking, ‚I’m just a person, I’m so human.“ I hold my
hands attached to my wrists up in front of my face while lying on my back and wonder at their
composition; the intricacy of tiny veins and glinting hairs, the delicate movement of tendons, the
wear of my knuckles and imperfect fingernails.
The artwork you’re being presented with emerges from an ongoing spiritual dialogue rooted in
a series of personal losses. Making it has enabled me to function, to grieve and to feel complicity
for future work. My process derives from this practice, and it requires that I let go of control and
intellectual analysis. These pieces are merely objects, contrived at that, if I fail to express to you,
here, how appealing it has been to take refuge in impersonal and theological or philosophical
allegory. We would all be more comfortable. Theory is theory. Easy to dismiss, approve, disprove,
manipulate. Even blatant symbolism, or perhaps real paintings (in the conventional sense) would
have allowed me more control. But somehow these exist and they behold my limitation. They
require my willingness to let go of what you think.
I am refusing to feed you pretense, and I hope that you would refuse to accept it. I hope that the
work enables me to be forthright with myself and with you because, mostly, I have a need to say
these things, and I’m actually somewhat terrified of sharing them with you. I’m not sure how
these paintings would function for an audience, as they’ve only emerged in the safety of domestic
enclave; but for the most part they acknowledge. They ratify for me and consequently, for others,
the validity of a person’s spiritual and emotional experience. They say, „here I simply am.“
