The original inspiration for the art installation “ECHOES” dates back to several years ago. What I was aspiring to explore was whether artistic creation only refers to the end product of a painting, or rather to the entire journey leading up to that final destination, the process towards that end product, which encompasses the artist’s thought processes and inner workings of their soul.
In the installation, I use the term ECHOES metaphorically. As a storytelling of the chronicle of a creation. A painter’s wiping their paintbrush, daubing one colour next to or over the other, is an unconscious but hardly random act, a form of art work in its own right. It is an aesthetic combination rooted in the depths of the artist’s soul, faithfully serving the ultimate objective and essence of art — to evoke emotions.
New painting compositions are freely born, unmediated and unconstrained by the rules of logic, acting as parallel stories, intrinsically linked to the artistic end result. A composition born of other compositions, like an echo reverberating the narrative of their story.
ECHOES is an attempt to capture the artistic process into an artwork, creating a sort of sculpture out of the pieces of cloth with which I have been wiping my brushes and spatulas while painting over the past 10 years. These rags have been individually photographed and isolated parts of them have morphed into new autonomous paintings, each with its own special story to tell.
The compositions are displayed on a screen, inviting the visitor to stand between the light emitted by the projector and the screen. In this way, the visitor’s shadow is interposed between the medium and the story told through it. This act is not symbolic; rather, it is a vibrant game of self-expression. The visitor is discovering the chronicle of a creation, while at the same time being called upon to explore new meanings that arise from the presence of their shadow. Besides, isn’t the human “shadow” always intervening between words and objects? Somewhere between the story we write and the story we craft lies the story of our self…
