Advisor meeting with Andrew Cooks, March 8th, 2018

Response to meeting with Andrew Cooks , March 8^th, 2018

I showed Andrew my two paintings I am working on currently. The question was, after I told Andrew about my back and forth process of schlepping the canvas from the garden to the studio, screwing it into the wall, responding with pastel and charcoal marks and texts and then taking it back to the yard, juxtaposing the process part and the intellectual part, if I cannot change that process? And then the big question, why black? It is the only choice I can think of at the moment, black, the absence of color, black the color of Tar, of the darkest dark, representing black dark memories. Anyways, I need to think more about that questions and address this also in my essay.

Andrew recommended me to read Michel Pastourreau’s BLACK , History of Color ( and I ordered it already and will have it next Tuesday).

One very good question for me was: could you make a painting that is a screen? Because in the past few months I had been playing with projecting onto the canvas (which was usually too dark or bringing images of my paintings into the film to bring the two mediums together). I will think about this more, also regarding a possible presentation in Berlin.

Again, we talked about the inconclusive conclusion that I am about to write, the essay/book is being written while I am still trying to find what I am learning and what all of this work is doing. The more work I do the more things I reveal – for myself!

Which brings us to the next point of our discussion: Andrew asked where the viewer/ the audience is in all my work? At the moment, my honest answer is that I don’t know, I find it hard to think about that ‘how the work is perceived’ part, I have been busy reading, researching, searching and creating and lately how I could possible ‘bring’ the work ‘out there’ that I haven’t thought about what I hope the work would do. But I will write and think about it, I promise…… Andrew’s comment was that the viewer needs space and I understand that! Just need to process it….. What is the work supposed to do? What do I want the viewer to take from the work?

As to the catalogue, Andrew had several comments, such as, for example, that I over rely on the text that I quote, that I should not treat those texts as authorities. I will go through all his comments he had and sent me as a pdf in the next days….(often too one dimensional, ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ etc)

We discussed the video, Andrew talked about claustrophobic images, is there a way I can imagine how I could present the work differently, other than the usual white box presentation? (How about 6 of my canvases create a box? One of the canvases is not as dark as the others and the video is projected on it?) My way to travel east to west, as a thought Andrew said it is going right to left, in writing that would be backwards, or opposite direction, etc. again will think about this more…..

Very good meeting, it is so good to discuss the paintings and the work, thank you for your feedback!