Marika's 24 May 2025 note describes the six paintings standing in the studio while the artists discussed Khôra and Grund as ground and place of origin. It then records the physical preparation of the canvases: stretching, glue sizing, repeated layers of gesso, and smoothing the final wet layer.
Original Russian authorial note
Group view of all six Grund paintings, 2025. 22 May 2025 — painting note A 22 May 2025 process note describes the paintings as approximately — but not entirely — white and tactile, resembling skin or old paper. Their surfaces differ in size, tone, texture, and in the relation between the dark perimeter and the light field; the note leaves open whether they seem sun-faded or rubbed away.
Original Russian process note
28 July 2025 — Grund series — Dresden Marika and Anton presented a new series of paintings titled “Grund” in Dresden. Six vertically oriented canvases, each slightly smaller than human height, are covered with an uneven layer of gesso and several layers of colored oil glaze. The gesso was applied by hand, giving the surface of each painting a distinctive texture.
“At first, we had to reflect on what a painting is in principle—ontologically. Once we arrived at a fundamental understanding, we began working with the material step by step. We chose not to go too far and stopped at a point of balance—between the painting as a concrete object and the image that might be just about to emerge. We didn’t give the paintings any titles other than their catalog numbers, so that each viewer can have their own personal experience.”
The exhibition will be on view at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts until September 8.
#contemporarypainting #nonknowledge #poorart #ontologyofart #whitepainting #origins
Later authorial reading — Not-yet-image A later authorised formulation reads this threshold as a state in which an image has begun to assemble but has not yet stabilised. This is a later reading, not a phrase attributed to the May 2025 notes.
This operation remains even when the geometric form disappears. In later painting the plane can be opened not by a cube, tube or cone but by fog, indeterminacy, a state in which the image seems about to appear but has not yet appeared. The means change, but the same problem remains: how to hold form at the moment of emergence, preventing it from finally closing into a sign or a stable image. Noise Index, White Mold, spatial forms and the later “fog” can therefore be understood not as separate stylistic periods but as a sequence of different instruments in the same work of opening form.
