VIEW IN MY ROOM
Netherlands
Drawing, Pen and Ink on Other
Size: 59.1 W x 39.4 H x 0.8 D in
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making of: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200955901433038&l=5389269114869999407 The subject is not WHAT I create, but more THAT I create." "In the best case... and for this reason I draw ... it's as if the universe vibrates on my skin and wakes up a powerful sensation inside my heart and body. It's like I'm listening to the inaudible sound of the energy in the universe which flows around and through me. This triggers a feeling of conjunction with incomparable originality. I disappear completely as a person or thing and I merge with this bare energy to forget everything and perceive myself only as being." "... When I draw, I draw the void. Not the line. I focus on the nothingness around the line. It is a sort of meditation. My mind is clear. My focus is on the mere moment. There is only this one moment. Every time the same moment. Everything else is still. Never thoughts are louder and feelings profounder than in this moment. My mind transcends into bare presence. Personality becomes formless and nameless. With each breath the emptiness is filled more and more. With every line I get closer to my real origin…" EACH LINE ONE BREATH, titles a collection of freehand drawings, which focuses on an artistic and graphic interpretation of evolution through the use of simple drawn lines. The collection starts from the premise that the initiation of any drawing, its fundamental prerequisite - a line - coincides with the most basic and transcendental state of life, the perception of breathing. In extent, I abstain from any kind of redundant artistic strategies such as figuration or the social, political, economic or cultural meaning within the work. By only focusing on a scientific framework and context, I aspire to reach that very bottom of essentiality I am looking for. Starting with a straight line, I draw each following sequence by copying the character of the previous. I concentrate on breathing and focus on drawing the successor. Again and once more. Again and again. In the process of drawing, my lines evolve into a kind of logarithmic pattern and layering, steered merely by aberrances and anomalies of human failure in contrast to the precision of a machine. The resulting artworks are reminiscent of a wave-motion-pattern transporting energy through space-time, such as any electromagnetic wave, or the pattern of a DNA-replication. Lines and layers are like a primordial code or anatomic pattern assembling, arranging and composing the manifestation of energy and matter. Lines are everywhere to find. In waves of sound and light, in water and dunes, growth rings and lines of trees, skin and stratum, tree formations in the forest, the falling rain, the grass luffing in the wind. The consecutive synthesis of lines bedded next to each other depicts an allegory to the stratification of constant transmission and fusion of matter. Any kind of an existence to me is the materialized conclusion of these very basic forces.
Drawing:Pen and Ink on Other
Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork
Size:59.1 W x 39.4 H x 0.8 D in
Frame:Not Framed
Ready to Hang:No
Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.
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Netherlands
BIO: John Franzen (1981) was born in Aachen, Germany. Both parents were nurses. With 7 years he grew up in Belgium. Later he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht, Netherlands 2002-2007, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Working in various disciplines and materials, he focuses on the theme and production of complex frames of concepts with the focus of the inherent primordiality. He lives and works in Maastricht, Netherlands and as an artist and conceptor. ARTIST STATEMENT: An artist in his true nature is made of incomprehensible multitudes; he is the untidy culmination of a shaman who is not believing but praying, a scientist who is not searching but analyzing, an engineer who is not building but inventing, and a child who is not playing but dreaming. He exists in the paradoxical state of attempting to capture his own vast inner perceptions of reality in the confines of the outer world. His artwork is mystic ritual, scientific model and applied philosophy. His process may be compared to how priests or shamans work while praying. His art springs forth in a way similar to the emergence of holy offerings, that is, from a deep internalization of and total commitment to the unknowable source of everything. Despite this comparison, Franzen’s work remains immanently non-religious. While his process and product may be relatable to religious performance, his muse is rather the concept of the ‘Human-Universe-Executer.’ The ‘Human-Universe-Executer’ can create ad infinitum from the pure energy which he attempts to command. One act, one stroke, one move represent, in essence, all creation. Each further act is merely a repetition of the first and considered redundant. The artist must wrestle with how to accurately convey the fact that the urge to create is, rather than being inconsistent with nihilism, is intimately allied with it. Shi Tao formulated the principle of one holistic brushstroke as a medium for the articulation of a non-dualistic cosmos. According to this principle, the ‘Human-Universe-Executer’ and the observer achieve a kind of transcendence through the creational act. The one act is thus the most central concept upon which the work relies. In turn, his work reflects the void as source and muse of life itself. Franzen’s art can be seen as a spiritual mindset or mystical conception which has been adapted from Japanese Taoist and Zen philosophy.
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