WHAT IS THE OCEAN?
My personal mythology. A manifesto of 15 paintings with text, each about its own philosophical essence. Each text is a summary of thoughts and feelings collected from my diaries for the 15 years. The manifesto is a part of me, who I really am, and I invite you to enter into dialogue with a paradoxical text that describes my way of thinking and perceiving the world. With thoughts born in my own history, with what I carry inside, and that only the closest people hear. Conversation without gimmicks, as open as if you looked inside my head.
WHAT IS THE OCEAN?
Something bigger around us that was here before us and will be after. Something that defies definition, includes the future, the present, the past, and what has not happened, everything and nothing, all the colors and no color at all simultaneously.
PAINTING THE VOICE
The texts of the manifesto could simply be printed. But everything is done by hand, the text is written with a brush, every stem and serif is a reflection of the path of thought that I went through. When I started working on Ocean, I didn’t have calligraphy skills, and, in fact, I didn’t know how to write. My hand was trembling, I was afraid to make a mistake. The way my handwriting became more confident over the course of the work is a reflection of how I went to the wording of the texts and learned to speak openly. Together with my hand, my voice also gained strength. In the process of creating Ocean, I was learning to write - and to speak.
Each artwork in the series is a text and a space in which thought dwells. This interweaving of black and white is the world of each of the ideas. Abstraction and text are inseparable from each other, creating a whole that is not the sum of its parts - a gestalt. If the text is a conscious part, a conventional language, then the space around it is sensual and bodily symbolism, energy that turns an idea into a reality with its own character and texture. This is the intonation of my voice, my feelings.
REFLECTIONS
Each of the artworks in the manifesto reflects one of the philosophical essences, expressed with one word. This word is repeated like a key within the text and is hidden behind stripes of black paint. But its letters made of silver leaf - the thinnest sheets of metal - show through and reflect the light, making the key visible at a certain angle.
The ability to reflect is one of the fundamental functions of our psyche, and in many ways endows us with consciousness. The artworks describe things that exist but can remain hidden until we reflect on them. Silver leaf is a mirror that reflects light, and when you found the right point of view, displaced from the usual position, you can see this reflected light, read the key, and reflect it inside yourself, realizing the ideas of the manifesto.
INFINITE PATHS
All keys and names that I have used are just conventions. The very word "Ocean" is a convention because it can be called whatever you like, just like any key in any of the artworks of the manifesto can be replaced with another, and all of them can be replaced with the Ocean because the manifesto is a part of the Ocean. This is the essence of the choice and uniqueness of each reader because the Ocean has no name.
Each word - the key to the idea of the manifest - can be replaced with another. This is part of the dialogue. What will you put in this strip of black paint? What idea will you read behind it? What do you see when you look into the reflection at the bottom of the well? There, in the depths of the unconscious, fairy tales and nightmares are created. Our freedom lies in our choice of how to use ideas and thoughts. This is the way to understand yourself. Dialogue with the manifest, part of my path, can create an infinite number of new paths - your paths.
ALPHABET
Each painting has a small sign. They are based on a symbol that I once saw in a dream, and which now, for many years, has been tattooed on my forearm, and it is also depicted in the central artwork of the manifesto. All these signs are combined into this symbol of the Ocean, and each of them carries it in itself. Once I was inspired by the runes of the elder futhark, which make up a conceptual system that describes the world as a whole: I liked the very idea of a symbolic alphabet in which a holistic meaning is encrypted. These signs invented by me are entities that carry the ideas of the manifesto. These are the alphabet of the Ocean, signs on the path.
THE OCEAN IMMERSED
The Ocean Immersed is a presentation of the immersive exhibition project, where the philosophical essences of each of the fourteen paintings of the manifesto will be presented inside a mythological labyrinth, an otherworldly space of several rooms through which the heroes participating in the exhibition will pass. The presentation took place on October 31, 2022, on the night of Samhain, which is believed to open the way to other worlds.