That which hurts and moves to the depths, that which marks and stigmatises,
that which is a scar and a stinging wound tips the experience of a place that is lined with anxiety.
A fragment torn by silence, ruptured by that which is incoherent and incomprehensible,
spreading open to the infinite […]
A. Kunce
The graphic art and painting series The Litho-painting explores places I remember from my childhood. The images in my work resemble mental maps – landscapes in my mind, constructed from other images, colours, tones, memories or old photographs. I treat them as palimpsests of traces of the past. They are imaginative palimpsest of my memories, reflections of the spirit of the times and expressions of the process of memory fading, combined with the added value drawn from my imagination. Memory creates the memories that our imagination transforms.
We live in a time of simultaneity in the understanding of space, a simultaneous sense of proximity and remoteness, of blurring boundaries, of displacement. The context of place in the 21st century has largely changed its meaning. We live, as it were, located in time, less and less attached to the place where we live at any given moment, while feeling much more strongly attached to the places where we come from, where we grew up. Sometimes this space almost loses its physical characteristics and becomes virtual, situating itself, as it were, in opposition to the idea of locality, associating itself with concepts such as from anywhere, from everywhere, from nowhere.
The series is oil painting on canvas, but primary process was made in lithography technique – by printing from the limestone matrices onto linen with an old graphic litho press. The prints were then stretched on a painting frames and finished with oil paint – layered, luminous, carrying the memory of their own making.
