Me and the Caterpillar I

Me and the Caterpillar I is a work that begins with old photographs found in the artist’s family album and questions the very structure of painting itself. The images in these photographs depict people and events that certainly once existed, yet they are barely connected to the artist’s own memory. These are images that “remain as photographs, but not as memories,” and they form the starting point of this series.

In this work, a strong contrast is created between the “figure” at the center of the image and the frame-like “ground” surrounding it, painted in acrylic gouache. The fabric that serves as the support is dyed by the artist and treated with sizing to fix the drawing materials. The outlines that describe the forms are drawn with watercolor and crayon, leaving only the minimum amount of visual information on the surface.

This process reverses the conventional method by which a painting is built toward a finished image, allowing the unstable state of an image before it becomes fully determined to remain visible. Although the outlines are extracted from actual photographs, they do not explain specific narratives or emotions; instead, they function as traces of the ambiguous atmosphere that exists between memory and record.

Me and the Caterpillar I is an attempt to examine the distance between the self and the image through material and structure rather than representation, and it serves as the point of departure for the entire series.