'ALONE WITH ONE'S THOUGHTS' @Moosey UK
Untitled, 90 x 150 cm, Acrylic on canvas 2024
Untitled, 100 x 160 cm, acrylic on canvas 2024
Untitled, 100 x 160 cm, acrylic on canvas 2024
Untitled, 40 x 60 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
Untitled, 40 x 60 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
Untitled, 40 x 60 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
Untitled, 90 x 100 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2024
Untitled, 78 x 88 cm, acrylic on paper mounted on aluminum panel, 2023
Untitled, pencil coloured pencils and acrylic on paper, 80 x 120 cm, 2024
Untitled, pencil coloured pencils and acrylic on paper, 80 x 120 cm, 2023
Untitled, 60 x 90 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
Untitled, 40 x 60 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
Untitled, 40 x 60 cm, pencil and coloured pencils on paper, 2024
We often find ourselves as a pawn in the interplay between the internal and external worlds. There is a certain unease that comes with being alone with one's thoughts, as the mind can often wander to dark and unsettling places. In such situations holding on too patterns can do both, provide stability but also drive destructive circular thinking.
My artistic practice is a reflection of this duality, where I explore the visual metaphor of creating patterns as a means of coping with the complexities of the human experience. I am driven by a deep fascination with repetition, pattern, and the meditative qualities of the creative process.
Intrigued by the ways in which digital tools and technologies can shape and personalise shared experiences, I incorporate elements like emojis, 8-bit images, and memes into my work. These seemingly clumsy forms of communication become a way of expressing unsettling thoughts disguised with innocent symbols.
Embracing these common and impersonal visual languages, a bridge between the personal and the universal is created, inviting the viewer to engage with the work on a deeper, more relatable level with comforting imagery to hold on to when the mind gets lost in unsettling thoughts.
In recent work, I have been experimenting with the use of three emojis as a starting point to explore tonality, layering, and abstraction. The repetitive use of these symbols establish order and predictability in stark contrast to the concepts the emojis and their combination symbolise.
Identifying patterns in the stimuli our external and internal worlds produce is our brain’s approach to categorise information and minimise it for us in order to be able to process and act on it. This includes periodic structures like daily routines or ordering objects in space, but also intuition and emotional reflexes. These patterns reduce noise and surprises and offer security through predictability. Structures also allow us to sense deviations from the regular and respond to them consistently. Patterns can also be found in cognitive processes such as circular reasoning and pondering providing stability and confirmation through feedback loops. The occasional all-destructive “what if all this is a facade?”, disrupting the calm and structured surface, exemplifies the fundamental fragility of the security our pattern thinking provides. And these destabilising tendencies can develop into established thinking patterns, too.
Similar to the effect of the patterns themselves, the clear, in a sense primary, colour palette of the emojis and the semantic satiation achieved by their repetitive use, temporarily softens the otherwise dramatic concepts behind the emojis and lowers the threshold for the viewer to safely access and engage with the multi-layered works on a deeper level.
Embracing the meditative qualities of the execution of an artwork is a fundamental part of my practice. Through a visibly slow, methodical, and repetitive approach to drawing and painting, contrasting the fast sketching process using digital tools, I establish a sense of stability and calm.This foundation of repetition and meditation serves as a flexible sounding board, allowing for room to reflect on trauma, doubts, and uncertainties for myself and the viewer.
Ultimately, my artistic practice is a reflection of the human condition, a testament to the power of the mind to both create and destroy, to conceal and reveal. My mission is to develop a universal visual language enabling me and a broader audience to share these difficult, often unsettling, themes with others.
Mutter “Biennale Halloween, Amsterdam NL, 2023
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Once a revolutionary proposition that predicted humans' inevitable co-existence with intelligent machines is what the 21st-century people call "ordinary life". Our corporeal lives are intertwined with the digital sphere to the point we’re oblivious to the fact that much of our reality isn't real anymore. Logistically, mentally, as well as physically dependent on machines, computers, gadgets, and apps, our post-human existence is turning out to be post-ordinary. And the homonymous group show featuring Paraskevi Frasiola, Pavle Pavlović, and Einari Hyvönen, is exploring how our everyday reality deformed under the influence of ever-present technology. POST-ORDINARY is conceptualized by Saša Bogojev and presented at Plan X in Milan from the 24th of February until the 25th of March, 2023.
- Saša Bogojev
Mutter, Amsterdam NL, curated by Angels Miralda, 2021
Paraskevi Frasiola’s drawings depict the anxious digital landscapes of our times where representation in the form of facial expressions inhabit waters and mountains as recognizable emoji characters. Frasiola’s tongue-in-cheek statements parallel the digital universe of captions and catchphrases as well as memetic humorous identification methods in our consumption of landscape as instagram stories and travel pictures. Each painting is made in a detailed and time-consuming hand-made copy that rejects the digital economy of immediacy. Hands slowly trace water and the emotions that wash over of the human mind - changing the chemical composition of the body.