Over the past four years at KABK, automatism has become the core of my artistic practice and the topic of my thesis. In the context of art, automatism is usually practised in the form of writing, drawing and painting. It was originally used by Spiritualists as a tool to reach spirits, later by psychoanalysts as a way into a patient's unconscious and was then adopted by Surrealists to explore the unconscious of the artist and, eventually, to a creative method that can inspire intuitive art-making. Throughout history, the interpretation of the origins of this unconsciously driven way of creating has shifted between the within and the beyond.
This series of oil paintings explores the disenchantment of contemporary life. It seeks to offer a reappreciation of the inexplicable and the unknown, in the face of a world disappearing in calculable formulas. By employing automatic painting techniques inspired by Spiritualism, Psychoanalysis, and Surrealism, I cure my yearning for something beyond explanation, not something to believe in, but something that acknowledges the weight of the unknown.
The body of work reflects the within and the beyond. Where determined spaces exist within seemingly infinite spaces, human bodies can become landscapes, and animals can be impossibly large or particularly small. These elements address the micro- and macrocosm that we humans navigate between. How small and irrelevant we are in the external scope of things, while at the same time containing an incredible vastness within ourselves; in our inner worlds of thoughts, feelings and fantasies. Highlighting the dualities of the internal and the external, chance and the determined, the rational and irrational, the real and the imaginary and blurring the lines within these seeming contradictions.
