Garden of delights Print

Artist Statement Olga Mun My current work uses abstraction to explore the boundaries between the historical reference to art and this living history, trying to name and vocalise this conflicting space in which we now live. References to the environment, art and human history take centre stage in the large, vibrant paintings. With a free, expressive drawing style layered with many different images, mixing figurative and absorbing elements, working largely intuitively. I use a lot of images taken from photographs, repurposed and reconstructed according to my personal vision. Often the images oscillate between figuration and abstraction. The work is complex and multi-layered. Through deconstruction and degradation, I find their equivalents both in imagery and in the application and removal of paint from the canvas. Systematic marking and spontaneity find equal grounds, links are not a secret, but a condition of work. Irreverence and crushing absurdity battle among the parables of human and natural history. The crisis of our own development is cultural, political and ecological - an encounter with it in my current work. Like social systems of invention and destruction, each painting is created using additive marking and restorative techniques such as scraping, painting, or solvent application. I embrace spontaneity and use the physical process to reflect on the nature of paint. This physicality breathes life into the pictorial space and helps the viewer connect with cultural objects, our relationship with the environment, and our preoccupation with idealised representations of the world.