14 x 11 inches
oil on linen
Another "false monochrome" that was initially exhibited in the 2014 UNCP faculty exhibition. Last post, I promised some explanation of the titles. If you haven't guessed, the Blog post titles are the English translation of the original titles, which are in Polish. Why Polish? Aside from the artistic relationship I've had with the country in my travels there, I have been interested with how the language looks to most Americans, who typically read only English. Russian's Cyrillic script is immediately recognizable as foreign but Polish has some accessibility in its Latin script. Yet, with its daunting use of successive consonants, it defies comprehension. Even with practice, I confess, it defies pronunciation. When I'm in Poland, I've thought at times it sounds like English is being spoken backwards--- and what's more Romantic than that? (I speculate David Lynch might agree, if we were to track the connection progression from Twin Peaks to Inland Empire.)
Painting aspires at its best to be another unspeakable language. Visually, I kept the contrast as low as possible to defy the image which is as apparent as its color. It's a red face, of course, but can it be more? The internet is overrun with easily digestible images; all here becomes cheap and loses meaning through abundance. In real life, original objects are becoming all the precious and strange. Many people are all the more uncomfortable in an art gallery or museum--they cling to the title cards to explain work. (I won't get started on museum headsets.) For 99.9% of the audience who view this work, the titles obscure rather than reveal. Of course, a quick Google translate would solve the mystery. Czerwoność means redness. (Or at least I think it does.) Does understanding make any difference, or was there something indeed more profound in not knowing?
