Some notes on the ‘Dolls’

Especially if academically trained, one can forget that the artistic production is a course of ‘play’. You start to take the occurrence of the process more serious than the flow of the game and forget that to play is actually a serious matter. At least for me, this has been the case.

Concerning beginnings and endings, and these not only in art but under all circumstances, I believe that we are in a transition period.  In this context it is possible to feel deeply ‘in- between’, to be unable enduring the ‘indeterminate’, to embrace the ‘familiar’ or, on the contrary, to let yourself into the void of ‘no authority’.

As someone stuck in this in- between I experience beginnings and endings from a completely personal viewpoint . It has been a transforming inception for me to remember the existence of ‘game’. During this transformation I started to create work that leaves composition behind and gives space to improvisation.

Stepping out of my academically trained discipline of painting enables me to meet new materials. I let them lead me wherever they go. Yet as soon as I master a material I voluntarily glide towards other forms, which oblige me to experience the  difficulties of amateurism. I learn that banal materials (a fabric, a string) have endless and joyous possibilities. I think I will keep on learning.

Why ‘doll’? I do not know. I have no prior relation to sewing.

Until recent times, I thoroughly believed that art had to have a stance that belongs directly to socio- political conditions. This conviction has changed when, in a harsh way, I came to understand that a human being is a human being, regardless under which socio- political circumstance.

Instead of forcing the viewer to take a specific side towards the works I aim to create a space where free association can exist. As a consequence I have eliminated during the preparations all excess of the installation. I planned a non-classical yet direct presentation.

The dramatic atmosphere that is created for the installation can be seen as a continuity of the imaginary background I used to put the works on while producing them. It also can be perceived as a decision independent from the creations and rather as an odd interpretation I added once I was no longer part of the works. Hence the atmosphere belongs to me but the works don’t have to belong to the atmosphere.

I hope to agitate the viewer’s need of touching; in other words to invite the viewer to play…

My works are results of an emotional process and not of a rational one… I can say that my dolls represent many states of existence or that they are the ‘monsters’ of our subconsciousness. Perhaps, going many steps further, each of them is a self portrait.

Having departed from the human figure I arrived at metamorphic figures.

My curiosity in human psychology and the intellectual knowledge I gathered about this topic during the production period of – yet independent from- my works are undoubtedly projected on the dolls. Nonetheless the ‘making’ evolved entirely instinctual. Therefore I don’t find any textual or conceptual ground appropriate for them.