Matter for thought

MATTER FOR THOUGHT

Five-part polyptych,  acrylic and oil on canvas, 120x150 cm, 2024

The human body is composed of approximately 65% water. Yet water is never simply matter: it is movement, circulation, and memory. Blood, sweat, tears, urine, sexual fluids. We are all made of substances that flow through us, carrying traces of our experiences.

In this five-part polyptych, anonymous male and female bodies overlap and intertwine. Their faces remain hidden, erasing individual identity and transforming them into fragments of a shared, collective body.

Blue fluid erupts from the bodies in powerful jets, while other streams slowly descend across their surfaces. The work explores the body as a vessel of memory. Experiences, desires, fears and traumas accumulate within us, often beyond language, until they find another form of expression. The eruption of liquid can therefore be understood as a form of introspection : the invisible contents of the self becoming visible.

This relationship between water, memory and inner experience recalls Bill Viola, whose work repeatedly uses water as a metaphor for transformation, consciousness and psychological depth. Here, however, water does not belong to one individual: it circulates between bodies, connecting what appears to be private with something collective.

The blue fluid becomes simultaneously body, memory, thought and paint : something we carry within ourselves, something that escapes us, and something that connects us.

I am a French-German painter, born in 2006, studying and working between Paris and Venice. I am pursuing a dual degree at Sciences Po Paris and in Fine Arts at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, which I began after specializing in visual arts at an art high school in Germany.

My art centres on the body and introspection. Sleep, rest and intimacy become threshold states transformed into pure colour.