THAW

The works presented in the exhibition “Thaw” are drawings made with oil paint squeezed directly from the tube and cleverly trapped inside blocks of ice. Each block has the shape of a stretcher frame and is suspended in the gallery like a painting. From the moment the work is installed, I lose control over what happens to the image. The shaping forces are now taken over by time, temperature, and gravity.

Everything undergoes a slow disintegration. Yet what occurs here is not an absolute disappearance but rather a transformation into another form. The material of the paint gradually loses the binding agent that once guaranteed its stability and existence. It is transferred onto the gallery wall and floor. The matter still exists, but at this stage its identity becomes difficult to recognize. The paint does not lose either its quantity or its quality – only its form changes. The melting process becomes a process of the image’s disintegration.

Water exists in three states of matter, and within each of them a different story may unfold. My interest lies in what happens between these states – in the moment of transition, instability, and transformation. Every anonymous face changes in every microsecond. Logically speaking, one cannot say that it simply is; rather, as Parmenides suggested, it becomes. A constant stream of subatomic change means that we never look at exactly the same face we saw a moment earlier.

The human eye does not perceive this process continuously. It is relieved from the need to constantly update the appearance of others and of itself. To capture this transformation, I recorded three time-lapse films. This led me to a second thread of the work, referring to specific figures and their ideas.

In three blocks of ice I “imprisoned” the images of Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx, and Mao Zedong – three symbolic figures and, in a sense, the ideological icons of the New Left of the 1960s.

My intention is not to declare a political position nor to formulate an explicit commentary. Yet the juxtaposition of these figures with the melting process forms a telling metaphor. Ideas may appear noble and elevated, but when subjected to the forces of time, temperature, and gravity – when translated into social reality – they often emerge in a distorted, drained, and deformed form compared to their original promise.