#494 Elegy

64x180 cm, painting 64x84 cm | Filler, oak panel, fresh white flowers (not included), stones, string

The top edge of the panel has holes for five flowers. Small water containers attached to the flowers (not included) on the back are included. When the work is exhibited, the flowers can be left to dry or watered and replaced as desired. The bottom also has holes for strings attached to five stones (included). See a videopresentation here and of the production here.

I wanted to make a work about the tragedy of life. When consciousness enters, life's fragile innocence and sensitivity are transformed into an image, an expression of language with its categories and boundaries. Only to be dragged under and disappear, leaving only memory and dead matter.

But I can also see how the work resembles a kind of instrument, and I have decided to call it Elegy, as in a sombre piece of music. Perhaps there is no chronology here, only the hope and aspiration we inhabit, coexisting with the mute forces of body and materiality. We play out our lives between these polarities. We shape it with the strings stretched across two impossible conditions.