#427 Portrait Of A Stone

Filler, oak panel, stone

The work is about the complex relationship between representation and reality. Language is infinitely stretchable in itself, but images and words must be represented in the physical matter to communicate. Thereby they lose their plasticity and become bound to size, time and materiality.
But the object, however, is always already a representation because we can only experience it through our senses. When we perceive it, it has lost its immediacy and concrete presence. The claim it takes on our consciousness is entirely subjective and infinitely flexible. The question of perspective, what is near and far, big or small, thus becomes impossible to answer.

Drawing a portrait is an encounter. The stone stands in the place it was when it was depicted, on top of the panel. The signified is part of the image, just as the image is part of the reality of the signified. I am trying to show the limitlessness between language and the concrete. It is one, just as we are connected with our surroundings. But to experience it, we must lose our subjective position and leave ourselves. Only then can we portray something new which is not already inside ourselves. To create you must also change.

I have drawn a stone because of its insignificance. My drawing might be unremarkable. But nothing is really insignificant. The world can feel dense, impenetrable and overwhelming. But attention makes negligible things clear and gives them meaning. It is important to remember that little strokes fell great oaks.