Shunga
Shungot is a two-year exploration into Erotic Shunga, a Japanese painting and printmaking sub-genre from the late 17th and 18th centuries. Progressing through various mediums, starting with one-color pen drawings in "Rooms - Spring/Winter," it evolves into collages in "Books," and further transforms into larger-scale pencil drawings in "Censor & Relationship." The leftover snippets from the book collages become abstract, seemingly organic collages in “Drafts”. "Draft:ed" explores the possibilities of collaging in the digital realm with an app co-created with Robert Bader. The culmination, "Rest," delves into the transformation from 2D to 3D and back. Paintings of the snippets evolve into mobiles that are later flattened again into larger-scale paintings on a white backdrop.
Rooms - Spring / Winter
The pen drawings intertwine with cutouts, embellishing the otherwise monochrome lines. They depict intimate moments of sexual encounters between 2 or 3 headless figures, adorned with a variety of clothes and intricate textiles. The context or surroundings are stripped down to bare basics, sometimes entirely cut out. In this way, the paper acts as a frame, both confining and unraveling the scenes.
Books
The collages derive from xeroxed double spreads from a Shunga book. While the original prints are explicit, the collages transform into censored baroque compositions with added fabric folds, coifed hairdos, ornate hairpins, and spasmodic hands and toes pasted onto genitals and other parts. The book serves as a frame, establishing critical distance, while the markings contribute tactile intimacy and meticulous involvement.
Censor-ship
Building on the previous collages, these larger pencil drawings delve deeper into the sensual acts they depict, offering an immersive and more intuitive experience.
Drafts
Free from the constraints of the original composition and purpose, “Drafts” utilize leftover cutouts of hands, feet, patterned fabrics, and hairdos. Pastes on graph paper, referencing both sketching and rigidity, these elements develop organically, retaining an abstract quality.
Draft:ed
Draft:ed is an app co-created with Herr Bader, enabling users to create endless collages with virtual leftover paper cutouts from fragmented Japanese Shunga prints. Users can rotate and enlarge the pieces, playfully minimizing the "precious" collage into a temporal, fun experience. The "second collages" were designed to disappear as the chat continued.
Rest
Rest is a transformative exploration where painted snippets are cut, creating small mobile sculptures that are then painted again against a white background. The journey from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, suspended and exhausted, releases the energetic load stored in the writhing parts. These mobiles become the subject of a new series of refined paintings, echoing the fabric's pattern on the front and lively uniform colors on the back. The tension between painted and pasted-on shapes, reminiscent of Frank Stella, culminates in a hung formation, recollecting the peculiar curves and edges of each piece, passively laid to rest.
