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2019 TEN
Now that I revisit this series and have included some of them in this catalog, I find myself ponde- ring what I was thinking when creating them and why I was so eager to do so. Apparently, it felt like a necessity; I can’t think of anything else, but is that truly the case? Wasn’t it also about the pleasure of creation, the actions of cutting, pasting, feeling the grime on my hands, the slippery substance of the wallpaper paste, those sorts of things? I had written some serious notes about this series; does that ring true as well? How do I view it now? Is the moment of creation more important than the moment of viewing it, once time has passed, or what others say about it?
Some works from this series I have sold; there was loving talk about the beautiful detailing, about the black in the images, the ‘deepening of the Gothic, the splendor of a cathedral interior.’ I com- pletely agreed with that sentiment. Looking back, I now think it was a stepping stone toward a new direction, determining a future perspective, a gaze towards a better world.
What I had previously written about was the use of polystyrene sheets as the base for these artworks, combined with the cutting, hollowing, and merging of them, offering the possibility to create various shapes and textures. By adding additional pieces of polystyrene to achieve varying heights in the work, more intricate structures can be formed. Some works, a series of 10 pieces, utilize book illustrations, mainly of church and cathedral interiors. These illustrations of Gothic architecture, symbolizing grandeur, are emphasized in the upward vertical incisions and elevations of the polystyrene substrate. Unaware, I used only one color: matte black paint. This paint became increasingly prominent and visible. The images gradually vanished, and in the final works of this series, I used only paint and no images. The prominent role of the color black in the ‘TEN’ series evokes a sense of energy and unstoppable motion. This served as inspiration and motivation for further artistic exploration and experimentation. In the ‘TEN’ series, the emphasis is not on explicit references or stories but rather on the visual impact the artworks themselves evoke. The minimalist titles of the works describe only what is visually perceivable, thus focusing entirely on the form, the black, the size, the material. The images in some of these works can still be ‘explainable’ because the skin of illustrations tells something, makes something visible. And the fully black covering, where it’s more about the inner, what you can choose to look at. This series led to my ‘Black Abstract’ series, consisting of 101 black abstract reliefs.
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