Iva Gueorguieva

at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe

Contamination Check,  2011

Memories : blues, red pain, scars, black despair. Some parts are not connected, because the connecting parts are forgotten. Memory catches the significant events, so the past seems packed. The future is calm, melancholy and static.

Phillip Allen

at The approach (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Permanence of the Unexpected Windfall, 2011

Our life experience as it moves from the current events(the bottom of the painting) to the distant past converts into logs. Wood logs (the central and upper parts of the painting). The father the events in time( farther up from the bottom) the more the logs are condensed, some events even collude creating a memory of an event that is actually several events happened a long time ago. All those memories (the logs) burden down onto our life, influencing our behavior and decisions. But we are getting help with this load. Our memory fails(the white-bordered semi-transparent figures). It fails for good reasons. It lets us make new decisions easier. It makes our memories feel better than they were.

Joan Mirò

Joan Mirò at Brame and Lorenceau (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Composition au visage, 1965

This is human memory. It is like a fishing net. It catches some events(the blue stain or the red stain in lower right corner) or persons(red-green circle or yellow-black one). And some things slip through with water(time) as  the black dots or pink background stains here. The things that memory catches are changing your memories. They create new associations. They bend the memory to accommodate the events and rationalize them.

Sarah Walker

Sarah Walker at Pierogi

Coumpound, Blue Haze, 2010

Time is eating our memories(the black strains with yellow border). There is stuff that happened to us, but we don't remember it.Things that we do remember are good, nice things. And we behaved our best. And if we didn't, we rationalized the behavior, so it would look like that in those circumstances it was the best possible outcome(the lower right corner). The reality as we perceive it is very distorted. At the end, the only thing is left to a person is the experience he collected throughout the lifetime. And nobody wants to collect the bad things.

Weekend Edition 14

Georges Braque

Still Life with grapes and clarinet

A table on the patio. Green grapes in a vase. Clarinet is playing in the background. You remember your trip to Tuscany. Vineyards. Small villages. Green hills. Bright sun. The contrast between the sunny side and shades. Blue skies. White (yellowish) wine in a glass. Grapes look like notes that you hear from clarinet (black circles on white background). The music takes you to Italy and back in a matter of seconds.

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter at Barbara Mathes Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Untitled (29.1.94), 1994

The green season (spring-summer - the green stain in the center) was before the red one(autumn)(the bottom red part). And before that it was a white season(winter). And the pattern was repeating itself as long as you remember. You don't move that much in these days.It is a winter season all the time. Everything is white, everything is starting to disappear under the snow. What is left for you is to sit near the window and watch. What is left to you is your memories.

Arthur Segal

Arthur Segal at  Galerie Berinson (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Interieur mit Blickpunkt Stuhl III

This is a memory of an event, which four persons witnessed. It could be a card game. Everyone has a different version of what and when happened. Everyone remembers different things. The same object has different meaning and associations for different people. One remembers the game proper, because he has lost a big sum of money in it(left bottom corner). Another remembers the chair, because it was unconformable to sit in, or  because it was not his usual spot. His spot was to his right, where the new guy sat. This guy won the game, because there was a mirror where he saw the cards of the guy who sat opposite him (a rectangle in the upper right corner). The fourth guy was occupied with something else(the upper left corner). He had big problems, and needed money. This fourth guy is the murderer who killed the new guy to get his jackpot.

Sarah Grilo

Sarah Grilo at Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche (Art Basel Miami Beach)

Papers

It looks like when you are trying to clean the walls from old wallpaper in order to put on a new one, and you discover old newspapers used as a underlining. Those are your memories from childhood. There are some bits and pieces of history and official events that you recollect vaguely, your handwriting whey you were in school and a number 35 seemed huge.The memories have warm, bright, sunny background. Though some of the events are darker than others, and some events you wish you could cross out from your life.But those memories are stone tablets. So the only thing you can do is to forget. That's why everything is in the fog of time.

Lloyd Martin

Lloyd Martin at Stephen Haller Gallery

Stratum

This is human memory. The vertically-aligned rectangles are events in our life. Some are better(gray), some are worse(black). The horizontal rectangles are associations, analysis and other tricks that humans do to make their life tolerable. The tricks distort the memory of events, but make the events look better than they were. The tricks tie the event blocks together, thus they provide some meaning to life.

Helene Heehyoun Chung

Helene Heehyoun Chung at Phoenix Gallery

Ravello

These are your memories.Events that happened a long time ago, so you are starting to forget details.People tend to remember only the good things. Because of forgetting details and remembering the good stuff, the past looks much more nicer and glorified than it actually was. The blue paint is to glorify the past events and put an extra gloss over them.

Angelina Gualdoni

Angelina Gualdoni at  Asya Geisberg Gallery

                                                           Untitled (Fragment)

This is memory. Your memory. You remember events from your past, some of them you remember better, some worse. Some left only a scratching on the window. All your past gets pink rose treatment. You remember things better than they were then.

                                                       Untitled (Green Stripes)

This is a personal tragedy that happened to you. Someone very important to you, that meant a world to you, has abandoned you. Or died. So what is left is carcass of a house you built together, burned to ashes. And this event is very bid for you. You can't move on with your life. You still feel the pain.