arteles_catalogue_2014

MEETING LEAVINGS / THE SWAN OF TUONELA
Meeting Leavings is a series of paintings inspired by decalcomania,
a technique used to transfer one image to another, leaving a fractal
pattern on both surfaces whose degree of recursion depends on
the viscosity and type of paint.
For me, the printed and the printer tell a story of coming/going,
equal/opposite. Compounded with layers of these connections
and disconnections, the pair of perfect squares provides a still
contemplation of relationships between two people or any two
things/ideas that have the ability to be changed. In a meaningful
connection, souls touch, and as in decalcomania, they come away
with halves of a splash common to only the two. Although souls
may (inevitably) separate, one can trace the ghosts of when they
were once together—like lovers who have left each other but who
have molded the other and become something else. The paintings
are a simply a moment in that creation, with the potential for future
transformation or regression from symmetry.
The Swan of Tuonela is a lyrical allegory with playful sensibility
through performance and brushwork. Inspired by the Finnish
landscape and drawing upon the Finnish Kalevala myth of the birth
of the moon as well as Pierrot’s timeless role, the stop-motion
animation is set to Sibelius’s mystical classical piece of the same
title. A deletion of one’s creation as self-confrontation is a lesson
in responsibility and acceptance of loss in the natural cycle of life.