Body System II

A female torso, cropped and fragmented, bears an abdominal cavity that evokes both wound and womb, an opening that is at once vulnerable and generative.

Within this recess, the presence of a handmade butterfly transforms the site into a chamber of metamorphosis. The pearlescent paint within carries associations of fertility, and this interplay between anatomy and material suggests the possibility of reproduction, gestation, or the spark of life, yet it remains suspended between biological reference and symbolic ambiguity.

In relation to the earlier Body System I, which emphasized the merging of body and canvas, this work extends the inquiry into questions of reproduction, destruction, and the continuity of life. The butterfly (fragile, ephemeral, yet enduring as a symbol of transformation) emerges from the concavity as if life itself could be conceived within the painted body.

Body System II underscores the paradox of the body as both archive and future: a vessel that bears scars of rupture while also carrying the latent potential for renewal.

Detail from an angle

Detail

Intermission No. 51

This painting embodies the elemental force of heat, not through depiction of fire but through its very material presence. Layers of oil and acrylic have been scraped, scarred, and built into ridges that resemble fissures in a scorched environment. At the center, a luminous field of yellows and oranges glows with the intensity of molten heat, as if the canvas itself were ignited from within.

Part of my series exploring the canvas as a living body, the work draws on the deep histories of material and myth. Where clay has often signified life’s origins in my other related pieces, here the element of heat represents transformation: destruction and renewal, collapse and rebirth. The painting radiates a core vitality that smolders beyond the edge of its surface, blurring the line between inert matter and animate force.

Like other works in the series, this piece becomes an “art-being,” an entity that refuses to remain silent as object, instead radiating its own energy, like an ember of existence made visible.

Detail

Detail

The Reader

In The Reader, a solitary figure sits against a rough wall, their form blurred into shadow, holding books or a sheet of paper whose contents remain hidden. Above, a pale cloth stretches across a clothesline, hovering between the ordinary act of laundry and the theatrical gesture of a stage curtain. The red color on the wall introduces a note of disturbance that cannot really be explained, like a memory or event that lingers without clarity.

The act of “reading” and what is actually happening here is ambiguous. The figure could be absorbing information from reading something, or they might be merely holding reading material. The draped fabric could be shielding them from the world, or it could be exposing them on display like on a theater stage. The figure’s indistinct features deny individuality, transforming them into an anonymous person in an unknowable narrative.

As in other paintings in this series, instead of individual portraits, the figures become placeholders, archetypes caught between presence and absence. Here, the act of reading is transformed into a metaphor for interpretation itself: the impossibility of ever fully knowing what is being absorbed, what is being withheld, and what has already been lost.

Detail

Detail

The Participant

The Participant continues the exploration of figures suspended in ambiguous psychological and physical spaces, where interior states echo against material surfaces.

Here, the curtain with oversized polka dots feels theatrical, almost like a backdrop. Yet the figure doesn’t “perform”; instead, she sits passively, gazing away, caught between being subject and spectator. Extending the theme of liminality, where moments are neither action nor stillness, but a charged pause.

The person is stripped of detail with her hair cropped short, face turned away, and body painted in flat dark clothing. Here individuality thus recedes, and she becomes more of a silhouette, like a placeholder for interiority, memory, or absence, rather than a portrait of someone specific.

The curtain dominates the composition, its dots almost swallowing the space. The tension between the flat graphic pattern and the draped folds mirrors the tension in my other works in this series between surface and depth, material and spirit, body and environment.

The figure’s gaze upward suggests longing or apprehension, but with the face obscured, the exact emotion is withheld. This ambiguity keeps the viewer hovering in the same unsettled space as the subject. Adding to the ambiguity is the strange shift in color and shadow along the floor and between the chair legs, more like an abstract painting than a representation of a person sitting on a stage. I believe the psychological dimension of this painting is powerful because it is ungraspable.

Detail

Detail