Description:
‘East Express’
The East Express speeding with me in it, relentlessly swallowing spaces. The Desire sit enthroned in cooling hearts that are chasing memory – beats. 1946 Archangelsk Camp – written by my grandfather .
Medium:
Watercolour and ink on polyester/faux silk
Dimensions:
140 x 160 cm
Description:
‘Distance is only keeping my body here`
Two shots were fired in the silent sky. One in the brain and the other, reached the heart. In between the rusty wire claws, was hanging the dead, who did not love the shackle-music; disappointments and pain was spilling as a river of blood, and as deposit, the soil was drinking it . 1946
Medium:
Watercolour and ink on polyester/faux silk
Dimensions:
140 x 90 cm
Description:
Auslander
“An Ideal is the space and inside the true opposites waving in chaos, and here it raves with fury ungracefully, back and forth like a fragile ship”.
Medium:
Watercolour and ink on polyester/faux silk
Dimensions:
148 x 151 cm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT:
Reflecting on my experiences, I lament the realities of my existence into physical form. When I paint, my inner world becomes a landscape in which I experience differentrealities and emotions. These remain in a state of flux, negotiating patterns and rhythms on the surface as energy and movement flow through me.
Synaesthesia causes sound to evoke a visual response in me.
Accessing my own mythology and listening to my instincts, I expanded my narrative of the self, which has brought me closer to understanding my family’s past in the present.
Living out my inside world on the outside, I reveal parts of myself as I control the material as if they were the parts of me that need guidance. It is a meditative process where I make sense of repressed memories, feelings of longing and loss.
I gravitate towards artists who depict parts of their inner workings otherwise invisible, who connect to nature from within, for example, Agnes Pelton, Erna Rosenstein, Hilma af Klint and Ithell Colquhoun. Since my father passed away, painting has become a sacred ritual where I can connect to his energy, by creating channels to be able to ask the questions I was not able to ask. I also began incorporating the writings and intricate ornaments from my grandfather, made throughout his imprisonment in, Archangelsk (1944-1946), a forced labour camp.
I find a sense of calmness in creating in-between places; where frictions between the body and mind, the dead and the living, our own wisdom and that of our ancestors, work in symbiotic ways. Creating unrecognizable realities forces me to be reminded of the interconnectivity in all that is one in nature and in spirit, resulting in biomimetic structures, signalling an unknown but familiar force which we are all part of.
Zoé Aczél 