Entropy in thermodynamics, Nietzsche’s everlasting recurrence, Heraclitus’ doctrine of flux, Jung’s idea of individuation, the Anicca doctrine in Buddhism, and Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis all recommend that the world is in fixed flux. From the inevitable decay of the fabric world to the psychological, religious, and societal transformations that form human existence, humanity has lengthy developed theories to watch, focus on, or clarify these phenomena. This ephemeral but cyclical nature of life, together with its accompanying experiences and circumstances, is on the core of every distinctive follow of the artists featured within the multi-solo presentation MELANCHOLIA FUTURA.
In that sense, Jessika Miekeley’s inventive course of is one in all transformation itself—she begins with realism earlier than subtracting, erasing, and reinterpreting her photos. The mere act of creation-through-destruction captures the thought of shift as an unpredictable, typically unconscious course of during which life and dying blur temporal and bodily boundaries. Pushing issues additional in direction of unmediated, Runa Ikeda’s artwork is rooted within the unconscious, the place hidden recollections and unknown sensations are saved. As a religious and emotional means of uncovering one’s evolving essence, development outcomes from reaching past the constraints of the tangible world. Whether or not by themes of id, bodily change, or the unconscious, these artists spotlight the strain between the impermanence of the world and the subjective methods we expertise and interpret it. For instance, Dimitra Liogka facilities her exploration of the feminine type on creating figures that really feel caught between two realities—recognizable but altered. This mutation bridges the acquainted and the surreal, leading to figures in a continuing metamorphic dance between fragility and resilience. Equally, Marianna Ignataki’s surreal, hybrid, witch-like figures and mask-wearing protagonists swap identities between self and different, dream and nightmare. Whereas exploring the psychological change that comes with need, concern, and hidden instincts, her work celebrates the grotesque fantastic thing about fixed flux. The stress of duality additionally permeates Wolfgang Guenther’s work, the place knights and legendary creatures embody private transformation and existential uncertainty. Their twin nature displays humanity’s ongoing self-redefinition and adaptation, visually conveyed by his dynamic layering of paint. Equally, Eva Maceková’s follow, which additionally embraces thick paint utility, explores themes of pure and religious renewal inside darkish, immersive, myth-like worlds. Evoking a Kafkaesque sense of alienation, emotional and psychological isolation, and the dehumanizing results of contemporary life, her environments paradoxically supply a way of security, reimagining darkness as an area for metamorphosis, regeneration, and reconciliation with nature.
Interested by Democritus’s assertion, “The world is decay, life is notion,” we acknowledge that all the pieces from matter to human life undergoes steady transformation, degradation, decay, and renewal. All the things within the universe is topic to time and alter, and nothing within the bodily world is or might be everlasting. So, how we expertise the world is subjective, based mostly on sensory perceptions, and subsequently not essentially an correct reflection of the target world. By mixing realism with surrealism and/or abstraction, every of those artists makes use of their work to symbolize the mutability of the human expertise and the world round us, providing a singular perspective inside completely different bodily, existential, or conceptual ideas. By exploring facets of transformation, id, and the complexity of human expertise, their works turn into manifestations, bodily imprints, and testaments to the brevity of moments and circumstances. The brevity that may depart one nostalgic for what’s but to come back (and destined to go).
MELANCHOLIA FUTURA is co-curated by Saša Bogojev and Nicola Petek from Frontviews, a non-profit affiliation/artwork collective that runs HAUNT, a cultural centre for city ecology within the coronary heart of Berlin, the place the exhibition will keep on view by October 4th, 2025.
