I continued my work on the war in Ukraine and I want to draw your attention to a new series of visual experiments in this second part of the war diary (the first part is here).
In this project, I attempt to distill the energy of dramatic moments with the purpose of amplifying the awareness of the urgency that the Russian invasion has brought about in our collective consciousness. It is a reminder that the war is not over and that it is going on very close to us.
In creating the second artwork on a large canvas (130 cm x 150 cm), Imagining the war dragging to a halt #2, I have employed the same charcoal technique that I used while making the first piece and a similar kind of gestural representation which was characteristic to the movement of Art Informel that emerged during the 40s and 50s. The charcoal was supplemented with recycled material fixated right onto the canvas. All the while, I’ve made video recordings that will serve to reveal the entirety of the creative process. This artwork captures the moment of an undefined impact, the fraction of a second in which matter is scattered violently and randomly, and my artistic approach, in this case, was the aesthetic defragmentation of the parts. What gives this artwork its uniqueness is the attempt to re-conciliate the apparent contrast between the violence and uncertainty during the impact and the careful re-composition of its resulting fragments.
Those of you who are familiar with my abstract art will notice my inclination towards using certain patterns, matrices or other aid tools with the purpose of employing certain motifs in a repetitive and emphasized manner (as in the case of Forest is Burning). This time, I used an old military drafting stencil that belonged to my grandfather who specialized in communications during the Second World War. So I set out to represent the motif of projectiles in a series of graphic works. This is how color sneaked into my war diary project.
Also based on patterns and colors, I explored the geometry of fire and the parabolas made by the ballistic trajectory of rocket attacks in a fuchsia-based visual experiment.
Meanwhile, the war on Gaza had also started. Part Three will follow.