Ambiguity pulsates with the lifeblood of the imperfect. In these figures the real interweaves with the dreamt, the actual touches the imagined, the beautiful and the monstrous exist as one. The unexpected shapes, the extra, the different sit comfortably with the ‘normal’ ones. Useless barren arms hanging by a figure’s side like dried up lianes, a hooked hunch on the back in which a pair of wings might be enfolded, heavy lumpy shapes growing from limp wrists, bulbous breasts hanging over fleshy folds, buttocks that extend into solid pear-shaped humps, a thin raised arm, a round pregnant belly - there is a degree of innocence (in the sense of unworldliness?) here, not least in the small size of the figures, but anchored in and evocative of bodily things, instinct, desire, pleasure, pain. (extract from my text for the catalogue, which I originally wrote in English and struggled to translate into German, my mother tongue, ending up with an awkward, stilted and offside text - rescued by my friends A. and W., who helped make it flow and sound German)
8 comments:
♡!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh Marjojo, this is so much more than i imagined. will be back to say more!
congratulations, fantastic work.
Beautiful words-Marjojo - it's stunning this work and I know so well that strange translating feeling- in the process of travelling between countries uncomfortable language like too small socks.
congratulations! what wonderful, fragile little creatures!
hi Marjojo, you are so right that i am afraid of closing down reactions and having the work be pinned down only one way. but it is hard for me to express all that i want it to say/what comes forth from the work. afraid i say one thing and it takes away another thing.
how do you do it so well?? what you wrote here just totally clicked. you have no idea how much i wish i could see this exhibition in person, be in the same space with these figures. i love how you have them on individual platforms belonging specifically to each of them. (love love the swing and the stack of paper!) it surprised me too, for some reason. they feel transformed and became dreamlike and all that you wrote. before, i saw them being subjected to their environment but here in this room, despite the feeling of heaviness and desolation, it is their world, and how beautiful and commanding their presence is.
it is simply mesmerizing. but I feel also uneasiness and disquiet looking at them, maybe some kind of atavic fear. perhaps it is because of the way the human subject appears to be broken into countless grotesque pieces, torn apart by instincts, struggling to emerge as form, as pattern, as beauty. and so frail, this unbearable frailty, emphasized by the immense openness of the white space in which they are suspended.
I wonder: why did you choose to write the explanatory text so objectively/scholarly? in the beginning I thought it was an excerpt from a Kunstwissenschaftler (how on earth do you say this in English?) analysing your work. It is not that I don't like it, quite on the contrary, it's so beautiful, but surprising...
I love the woman on the swing. Hiw can I aquire it?
Hello there Marjojo
I have not visited your blog for a while and am both delighted and saddened in what I find.
I am very pleased that you seem to have your work exhibited in a decent gallery in Germany and although utterly exhausting you seem to have had a positive experience on the whole.
Did you take any photos of the exhibition as a whole AND of your own work in situ, within that contxt? Would be nice to see these as the link to the gallery where the show was held dont show anything along these lines.
I also suffer with a variable and dibilitating 'condition' scoliosis, with its chronic pain and energy draining "second cousins"!!
This past year well since May has been even more hard going and now I can only walk with a crutch(or crutches) which demands even more effort.
I happen to think that of all the artists who have blogs about their fine art practice, yours is by far the most eloquent. You write beautifully even in your expression of your own despair at how currently your 'condition' is behaving like a demanding spoilt child.
Hopefully you will improve and perhaps doing a small drawing using something like those water soluble Karisma pencils onto some nice water color paper might be something to aim for each day just one A4 page or something like that.
I have fallen behind with my onw blog these past few months so need to get back into the swing of that.
Everything is such a tremendous effort.....thats the difficulty....I know I really do
take care
Aine
Post a Comment