artist statement
“No matter what, I’m cleaning the skin of the earth.” said Nadia Korths. The objects embedded into the styrofoam printing plate, are all found and/or reused. The recycled styrofoam is broken down. They all come from the here and now.
Her prints are an abstraction of the moment when human beings interact with rich inks and papers; of humans connected to place; of humans exploring/experiencing process.
Experience ‘moments of being,’ intense sensations that stand apart … Her work provides the boundary for silence… to step into a moment… to allow for moments of composition and stillness when your brain (goes) into a reverie…
Background Philosophy (excerpts from two articles)
“Silence is also a reminder of how much you can articulate without words…feelings…can be more primary and fascinating… ‘I compare (silence) to the zero in mathematics. People think it’s nothing but actually it’s not. It can be very powerful. (writer, director Hazanavicius)’”
excerpts above from Silence is Golden, Maureen Golden, December 2011, NYTimes
The artist hopes to help “recapture our critical spirit, the sense of complexity, and our ability to listen. … regarding issues of conviction, faith, understanding, ethics and behavior.
The ‘act of self liberation’… the core of spiritural experience – when the emotions urge us to let ourselves go, spirituality requires of us that we educate ourselves. …spiritual discipline against resentment or self-righteousness…
(The artist) “strives for the universality of a message that transcends the particular and allows us to understand the common universal values that make up our horizon … enterprise of critical intelligence and understanding … call us to the universal … invigorates self confidence … teaches us to learn to open ourselves to the world, to make ours what is good, whatever it’s origin, to understand that each of us has multiple, fluctuating identities, that diversity is a school for humility and respect, and that humanity is one.
A sense of the ethics of debate, of receptivity….”
excerpts above from The global idealogy of fear or the globalization of the Israel syndrome by Tariq Ramadan
My prints, mostly hand printed styrofoam reliefs, are improvisational explorations of line quality, shape relationships, tonal intensities, and color defined by the reuse and transformation of everyday and discarded objects.
Since 2007 I’ve been relief handprinting abstract landscapes, still lifes and figurative works from objects; discarded and found. My printing plates are supermarket styrofoam trays that food is packaged in.
Each print is made from only the objects I find during a day and a place, wherever and whenever that may be. It is a record of that precise day and place.
I have no preconceived image in mind. The process reuses and transforms the objects into images which are mysterious, full of movement, rich in color and sometimes whimsical. It is whatever emerges from the juxtaposition of the objects pressed into the styrofoam plate and from the color palette and tools of that day.
