SOL
2018-19 | oil on canvas
The circle is eternity and the dot is the concentration of time in the moment.
​
​
A dark figure seated on an ancient stool, reaching for a slipping mule in an exhausted fashion accompanied by an apathetic gaze. The scene is surrounded by a frame made of small delicate pieces of mother of pearl tiles, catching the only light that appears to reach the gloomy scene. In the center of the scene illuminates a circle, corresponding with the surrounding frame, worn by the figure on it's ear.
The painting reflects the position of a being, unable to give in to the order of the sensual world. Similar to a description given by the author Hermann Hesse about his fellow Julian Green, it tells how one ‘believes in God, who is the substance, reality itself. However the world, in which the believer resides, the sensual everyday world that surrounds him, is what separates him from God. It closes him off of him, like a room or a house closes one off of air and skies. And that is the reason that what captures, interests and fascinates him in the world, above all else, is the holes, the faulty passages in which he discovers the truth.'
The conflict of a desire for unity in a state of separation is depicted in the relationship between the painted mother of pearl frame and the earring. While of the same material, they are separated by the dark space in which the figure, the body itself is placed.
The center, as which it perceives itself, the essence and soul of the figure, being of the same substance as the world it is bound to and originates from, but from which it is now disconnected. The longing for oneness with the true nature of things and the urge to find God in - yet also beyond - the physical world is in SOL a contemporary depiction of the idea often met within the Romantic Movement of the early 19th century.
The error in this notion is exposed by the position of the earring, which, as opposed to the viewers first impression, is not precisely placed in the center. The distorted autistic perception depicted, manifested in the desperate longing for oneness through the idea of a faulty ‘Weltseele‘ is the origin of dualism between body and soul, reaching back to ancient believes and the early days of philosophy.
A delirium caused by mental isolation.
Apart from the Trompe-l’œil mother of pearl frame the painting is set in an original french stucco frame. The fact that this particular design was originally intended to hold a mirror, not a painting, adds to the meaning of the picture. The depicted figure, whose gender remains a matter of discussion, is shown almost naked - apart from the accessories - yet not revealing. The earring around which the painting is centered was part of the PEET DULLAERT Fall-Winter 2017/18 collection as are the satin mules by MARNI. Despite the nudity, the accessories imply a nobility and luxuriousness as do the pose and gesture of the model in the means of the classical ideal of ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur‘.
