Drehe das Kissen

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each 7 x 12 cm

2017

 

The series titled "Turn the Pillow" comprises various works created in different media and formats, driven by diverse sources and considerations. Their common purpose is notation. This human need to record, collect, remember, and preserve is widespread. However, in this context, it doesn't serve personal gratification; rather, it emerges from within, using its own concepts and language. It raises questions about existence, idiosyncrasies, motivations, and objectives. Notation, in the sense of preserving or leaving a trace, is a universal impulse. We tend to want to keep real events and inner changes and processes alive by leaving something tangible or keeping something firmly in memory.

Art, as a system or language, is predominantly anthropocentric and exists within the realm of human society. When we use art to shed light on the deepest corners of human existence and needs, we realize it can also serve as a form of escapism, delving into profound projections and a particular form of the unreal. Creation simulates life within the framework of freedom. This series aims to blur the boundaries between simulation and reality. Drawing, paper as an object, photography, and installation are opposing yet cooperative elements. The spoken, the displayed, the suppressed; the unspoken, the lived, and the dreamed blend together, forming a symbiosis that bears witness to the fact that all of this coexists within a person simultaneously, constantly changing and breathing.

The subjects and scenes from the artist's private life and experiences are not described for their own sake. They are experiential surfaces created to represent fundamental principles, not pretending to be significant. Instead, they aim to depict life as it is, yours or mine, in its ordinariness, and then transcend that ordinariness slightly to offer hope for the meaningfulness of our existence.

From an external perspective, life is a sequence of events, feelings, and encounters to which we give meaning and a sense of order. Taken out of their original context and placed into new contexts, these depictions begin to question the specific system for processing information from our surroundings and inner lives. At the same time, they challenge Aristotle's empirical assertion that "nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses," followed by Aquinas's statement that "sight is the most intellectual of all the senses." There is no word for the particular quality that memory imparts to direct experience. Memories, like artworks, can never be concluded; they can only be abandoned. Once certain scenes or events are remembered, they carry a certain weight - not necessarily nostalgia, not always sweetness - absent when we directly experienced them. These works trace this quality, speaking in hushed tones, receptive to confidences, and taking the form of a report that examines what it means to be that person. The heterogeneity resulting from disiecta membra, analysis, and the recording of different experiences, combined with execution in various media, results in the formation of a new unity that allows for multiple interpretations. This new body functions as a whole, while each of its parts can stand and exist alone.

In addition to what is depicted, the physical presence, characteristics, and origins of the works are significant. Photos that appear less real than some drawings, photos that resemble illustrations or fragments of dreams, coexist with photos that were found and physically existed before being included in this series. Drawings serve as notes of something that stood before the artist, drawings of something that never happened and never existed, drawings attempting to represent something that occurred only within the artist's mind. When combined, they form larger format drawings. Therefore, they can be seen as mosaics, puzzles of the seen and the unseen, where the fantastical, the splendid, and spontaneous motif selection are absent. They retain the mystery and breadth that create tension and sometimes discomfort. Tension arises from the search for identity, answers, and order in the realm of collective memory, as well as from the analysis of the personal mechanism that enables the interpretation of the inner world.

The resulting body from this described process, one that tends to devour its own tail, leads us back to the origins. Sometimes unsuccessful and failing, it does not claim to solidify into a single entity or become an algorithm for interpretations and personal self-development. The body is there as a witness to its own existence, created, as previously stated, as a note.