brick and mortar but ... Yellow, Simona, Qargo, 2026, acrylic and acrylic inks on canvas, 150 x 200 cm.
With this work, I continue to observe a titling methodology I began implementing many years ago. Inspired by each individual image, I select three keywords which I input as a compound search term into Google Search. In the present case, the process originates from qualia, yellow, and afternoon. On the fifth page of the search results, I found a title that appeals to me, extracted from the proximity of the ellipses marking the discontinuity between indexed text fragments. It is a pattern that appears increasingly seldom, I observe, and it may eventually disappear. This selection procedure is, for me, a discovery of involuntary poetry through which I subjectively validate the forced associations emerging within the global data archive, transforming informational debris into metaphorical structures.
The intention of the work was formal and technical, built upon the capacity of color and painting to emit themselves. I wanted to start from yellow in order to finally obtain something that might be called the qualia of yellow—the sensation that a warm presence emanates from the painting. An image that was initially a colored drawing on a yellow background shifted toward expanses of intentionally mixed colors, such that every hue physically contains a minute amount of yellow in the case of cool colors, and a generous one in the case of warm colors. The only color I used as such, without mixing it with others, was Cadmium Yellow.
The photograph serving as the basis for the painting is a singular one from my collection of sources, from a day when I imposed upon myself an exercise in pausing time, a calm stillness, for resting and looking. It promptly returned a sensation that, for that moment at least, everything was as it ought to be. In memory of that day, in an attempt to relive that state of grace, I spent approximately 30 days mapping details within an image too complex for an ordinary act of painting. And it became very clear to me that this is how I paint—encircling a detail and declaring with color: this thing is known and marked as a leaf, or a mug, or metal. Gestures are repeated until everything unfolded beneath the gaze is indexed and clarified, at which point the painting is also finalized. Unlike the traditional horror vacui, my practice is driven by a horror indistincti—a rejection of visual ambiguity and the nonsensical. I do not crowd the canvas to flee the void, but rather I dwell upon it until every amorphous element is compelled to declare its form and its belonging.
With this work, I continue to observe a titling methodology I began implementing many years ago. Inspired by each individual image, I select three keywords which I input as a compound search term into Google Search. In the present case, the process originates from qualia, yellow, and afternoon. On the fifth page of the search results, I found a title that appeals to me, extracted from the proximity of the ellipses marking the discontinuity between indexed text fragments. It is a pattern that appears increasingly seldom, I observe, and it may eventually disappear. This selection procedure is, for me, a discovery of involuntary poetry through which I subjectively validate the forced associations emerging within the global data archive, transforming informational debris into metaphorical structures.
The intention of the work was formal and technical, built upon the capacity of color and painting to emit themselves. I wanted to start from yellow in order to finally obtain something that might be called the qualia of yellow—the sensation that a warm presence emanates from the painting. An image that was initially a colored drawing on a yellow background shifted toward expanses of intentionally mixed colors, such that every hue physically contains a minute amount of yellow in the case of cool colors, and a generous one in the case of warm colors. The only color I used as such, without mixing it with others, was Cadmium Yellow.
The photograph serving as the basis for the painting is a singular one from my collection of sources, from a day when I imposed upon myself an exercise in pausing time, a calm stillness, for resting and looking. It promptly returned a sensation that, for that moment at least, everything was as it ought to be. In memory of that day, in an attempt to relive that state of grace, I spent approximately 30 days mapping details within an image too complex for an ordinary act of painting. And it became very clear to me that this is how I paint—encircling a detail and declaring with color: this thing is known and marked as a leaf, or a mug, or metal. Gestures are repeated until everything unfolded beneath the gaze is indexed and clarified, at which point the painting is also finalized. Unlike the traditional horror vacui, my practice is driven by a horror indistincti—a rejection of visual ambiguity and the nonsensical. I do not crowd the canvas to flee the void, but rather I dwell upon it until every amorphous element is compelled to declare its form and its belonging.
