Statement
My practice is centered on the fundamental encounter between the self and external reality. This exploration is rooted in a radical reduction of the landscape to its most essential structures, a move away from the "pathetic fallacy" of traditional landscape painting. Rather than imbuing nature with human emotion or narrative, I employ an "objective iconography" that treats the world as a site of profound, indifferent presence. By stripping the view of its anecdotal noise, the work focuses on a dialectic of permanence and change, utilizing architectural symmetry - often reminiscent of the iconographic traditions of the Renaissance - to create a sense of formal stasis and ceremonial weight.
In this framework, the experience of the sublime is not found in a subjective emotional "overflow," but in the sobering loss of human scale. When the world is reduced to its elemental pillars, the viewer is confronted with a reality that exists entirely independent of their perception. This creates a specific kind of "transcendence" - one that does not exist as an internal, spiritualised state, but emerges solely from the friction of our encounter with a world that remains fundamentally "other." It is an attempt to map the architecture of existence through the clarity of the "thing itself."
Central to my Nightview series is the concept of the "displaced presence." In most figurative traditions, the self is "reified" - treated as a solid, unified gestalt or a heroic center around which the world revolves. My work seeks to dissolve this illusion. By rendering the self as a reflection, a shadow, or a shimmer in the dark, the "I" is transformed into a ghostly intermediary. It is a presence that is physically located in one space but visually anchored in another, integrated into the environment rather than dominating it. By rendering the self as a reflection, a shadow, or a shimmer in the dark, the "I" is transformed into a ghostly intermediary. It is a presence that is physically located in one space but visually anchored in another, integrated into the environment rather than dominating it.
This creates a visual polyphony or counterpoint between reflected interior and the exterior. The reflection of the self and the structure of the landscape function as independent lines of music, moving alongside one another without ever fully merging. The self is not a monument; it is a "happening" within the environment. This displacement forces a shift in perspective: the artist and the viewer are no longer "here" looking "out," but are suddenly "out there," looking back at a version of themselves that has become an object within the landscape’s own field of vision.
Through this process, the act of painting becomes a way to investigate the "split self" - the tension between the eye that sees and the image that is seen. By placing these "displaced" figures within a highly symmetrical, structured composition, I aim to create a secular iconography. The work ultimately suggests that identity is not a stable core, but a fluid, translucent element caught in the eternal rhythm of the external world. Transcendence is thus found in the moment the ego breaks against the hard reality of the world, leaving only the resonant "drone" of existence and the "melody" of our temporary witness.
This "eternal rhythm" finds its temporal counterpart in the Tarkovskian concept of "sculpting in time," where the image is not a static record but a pressure-vessel of duration. By repeating these elemental structures, the work moves away from linear progression toward a circularity of time, echoing the deep, geological pulse of the drone. In this framework, past and present collapse into a single, non-linear "now," where the displaced figure exists as a recurring signal in an ancient field. The painting becomes a site where chronological time is suspended, replaced by a ceremonial duration that mimics the slow, indifferent evolution of the rock and the sea. This temporal stasis invites the viewer to inhabit a space where the moment of witness and the age of the earth are experienced simultaneously.