Photo © 2020 - Sol Kjøk - All rights reserved

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I create figurative drawings and paintings − preferably life-size and beyond − dealing with the fundamental interrelatedness and interdependence of all living things and the constraints imposed by our physical bodies. My scenarios are not mental constructs; they come from wordless places such as dreams, meditation and other states of altered consciousness. Their truth, revealed in some partial way to the dreamer, suffers from being squeezed through the bottleneck of verbal language.

I believe this imagery springs from a well that we all share. Western civilization is now at a pivotal point where cutting-edge science is starting to prove what mystics and ancient cultures have always intuitively known: all matter in the universe exists in a web of connection and constant influence and thought is simply another form of transmitted energy. The consequence is no less than a revolutionary paradigm shift: We can no longer view ourselves and our minds as the private, self-contained workings of an individual brain. In short, we are oneness having the experience of separateness.

To put these internal glimpses out there in the world, I use my own and my friends’ bodies as a visual and visceral source. I gather my loved ones in my studio to pose with me, often in acrobatically challenging ways. This hands-on physical experience allows me to explore aspects of the human condition that are particularly interesting to me: pushing against our limits; the risk of falling; the co-presence of vulnerability and strength.

The resulting paintings can be displayed in all directions, as their story is one of constant flux and cyclical time. I aim for a continuous quality where nothing has an endpoint, and one movement flows into the next, like a ribbon. Since every figure depicted is a real person in my life featured in multiple works over the years, I also see this series as an exploration of the concept of reincarnation: “Every lifetime, we meet the same circle of souls, to say thank you or to say sorry, and once again exchange our roles.” (From ‘Amen’ by Gogol Bordello, my favorite New York gypsy punk band.)”