Leeway
The project is about the innate unreliability of memories in particular of places we experienced, the way these memories mutate and merge into complex collages. I want to portray them metaphorically as abstract metaphysical spaces with no purpose, forging the chimeras of places I have seen, visited, lived at. I envision them as symbols of a person and the mental state illustrated by visual series followed through life.
The question which I am investigating on with my project is how we perceive spaces based on our experiences.
I am inspired by the idea that we always try to escape from reality but at the same time never stop seeking it.
My biggest fascination in photography is its ability to construct a different world, a photographic reality. I came to photography from painting and it formed my way of using photographic medium sometimes more like a painter. I work with digital photography where retouching using Photoshop has an important role.
The way I worked on my project I call intuitive Photoshop. I’m trying to work sort of in a way selective memory works. No sketches, no pre-thinking, creating non existing spaces which don’t represent any familiar place but are made of familiar elements (wallpaper, chairs, doorways, drapes etc) which can be sort of tv or theatre sets for my life. Considering this I chose to use the technique of collage to build my project. Fake becoming real and real becoming fake is what fascinates me, when images becomes ambiguous, when familiar turns to be unfamiliar.
At the beginning of my research I was trying to understand the meaning of an image of a house which is present in many of my works and my mother who is a psychotherapist told me about the method of Guided affective imagery of Hanscarl Leuner. The psychological test which helps to identify some psychological issues and characteristics of personality. In this particular test you would be asked to draw a house and doctor can interpret such key elements as for example an absence of windows as introversion and
so on. This test is the base for my projects or better the idea of a space being a symbol of a person who portrayed it. I call them “mental spaces”.
I believe that places I try to depict in my works reflect my experience as a child facing a divorce of my parents at the age of 14 and moving to a house which I felt highly uncomfortable in. Since then I was in a constant phase of search for a place where I can be in peace with myself and surroundings. Since eighteen years old I kept moving from one country and city to another.
At certain point of my research and image testing I started questioning myself can my houses be also seemingly not livable? Because my experience of moving so many times didn’t help me feeling like I ever am home and comfortable. Here I came to the point when I decided to portray very abstract spaces which are metaphors for selective memory. My intention was to create spaces so abstract that you cannot say if it is a house or a gallery or a shop.
The idea of “uncanny” is the key in my art. The sense of dislocation between space and object, past and future. One of my main references is Giorgio de Chirico and metaphysical art. I think of his paintings as collages of images, memories, impressions and I have similar approach in my project.
I am inspired a lot by cinema. David Lynch with his double sided world: perfect suburban life so called “American dream” with another side as surreal and ugly. I wanted to portray this duality: on one side containing the idea of perfection in forms of straight architectural lines, symmetrical composition, cleanness although becoming sort of off, fake, surreal, pressuring closed spaces without windows or any signs of life. Constant relocating between different cities, houses, apartments inspired by mental images which come to represent the closest thing to “perfection”(American dream, perfect house, comfortable place) that we can visualize yet they may appear as flawed and incoherent.
