VERTIGO Painting

The paintings from the VERTIGO series were created in 2013 - 2014. The word comes from the Latin “vertigo” which means dizziness. I am looking into the topic of the merry-go-round. I am interested in its literal meaning – the construction of the carousel itself, the horses’ figures, together with all the details and lighting reflections on its shiny surface. However, I also take into account its symbolic meaning – the merry-go-round of life, in the dynamic movement of which everyone is riding their show horses being in the position of a front-running or an overtaken, endlessly and constantly. On some of the canvases I have drawn different fragments of the carousel – tough, rhythmic, machinery, shiny. I chose to take a point of view on the horses which takes away their perception as a children’s toy, and instead transmitting them an ominous and fearful aura. They are threatening to ride over us, and the “entertaining” merry-go-round turns into a “murderous” merry-go-round. On other parts of the canvases I have drawn portraits of the different states of the riding man. He is in a hectic race in this rushed life, full of fast changes and a constantly increasing stream of information, which altogether is represented in slow motion. The rest of the paintings show the view outside of the merry-go-round. These are distorted, unfocused images in which you can puzzle out the encoded intrusive slogans of the advertising industry, which is widely taking over our present-day life. The exposition includes 27 canvases with the same size which represent different pieces of the vertiginous “racing” in life. They influence the audience with the same amount of persistency in the separate elements of the puzzle of life as in a film reel. The images in the paintings, however, are a counterpoint to the overall order and sameness of the format – they are in different dimensions, unfocused or focused, polychromatic or achromatic.