The ideas that most often excite me and translate into material form in my artistic practice come from many directions - sometimes from first-hand experience (i.e., the natural world), sometimes from pre-existing visual material (my work or external/intentional), and sometimes directly from my imagination or memories. The unifying link between these vectors is that always the ideas and images I engage with have previously triggered an emotional response in me, or the newly created image is itself a synthesis of an inner emotion (in more associative type work). These ideas are manifested in a relatively broad and sometimes divergent but generally stable coordinate system - between concreteness, materiality, figurativity or fluidity, non-objectivity and abstraction; between intense colour or depth of black; between expression or static image.
I perceive pictorial space as a field charged with potential. I am aware of the contingent nature of painting and pictorial matter and try to rely on this primordial character. Recently I have come to recognize the act of painting and, in a broader sense, creation, as an integral part of perceiving the world and life as a whole.
The artist has to gradually build his sense of space and be able to "negotiate" with it. To consider how and where his works would work well and where they would not. I would say that my approach to working with space is practically oriented. I also aim for the works I situate within it to sound whole together, not fragmented. Space and environment also always influence the way in which certain works are perceived and this should not be ignored when making creative and exhibition decisions.
In another sense of working with space - it is related to the illusory (or not) space of the painting, the approaches I use are different - to work with topoi from the natura; to borrow logic and structure from the natura, but to build on it and modify it; to let the space in the painting be self-generating and guide me.
Working with text is one of many personal choices each artist makes. In some cases the text transcends the image, in others it follows and explains or contextualizes it, sometimes it complements and accentuates it, sometimes it invalidates and limits it, sometimes the text is also the image. As an artist with a bias towards the image, I would say that the interaction between image and text is inevitable, but personally I advocate more for images that can live autonomously without necessarily needing the support of the text. An image, unlike speech or text, works in a non-linear way and is perceived in its totality.
As such, when text is present alongside my work in a space, I aim for it to have more of an introductory function, but not to be an attempt to 'translate' the image into textual form.
Every viewer is different. People most often perceive the art they interact with through their own experiences and understandings. As such, I have no expectation of a strictly defined audience response as some sort of fixed goal. However, I do believe in the spontaneity of the process of interaction between a viewer and a work of art, and of course I value the moments when an exchange happens between them, whether on an emotional or intellectual level. I would be happy if my works manage to direct the viewer to a state different from their usual one, even for a short time. At the moment, I feel mostly connected to images that predispose to contemplation or those that reveal the path to other mental realms.
The exploratory approach has its place in the wide field of techniques and ways of making art. Of course, the relationship between theory, text, concept and art must always be properly weighed lest the work itself run the risk of being a mere peripheral appendage of a self-sufficient conceptual construct, and on the contrary, theory/idea and object/work complement each other in unexpected ways that only art can generate. As for my practice - it has happened that I have also worked on more specific projects that have involved stages of research and a more methodical approach to the process, which is also interesting in itself. But generally my approach is more intuitive and emotionally driven.
