Flesh in the Baroque

The subject of flesh is dominant in the Baroque, where voluptous bodies or cascades of bodies and cloth create endless  folds.

I  see the baroque as the demand and desire of the flesh, or matter, to represent itself and expand into space. The Baroque celebrates the 'Flesh of the World'. It predates Merlau Ponty's vision of 'Flesh as a choreography between the flesh of the world and the flesh of the body'.
According to Giles Deleuze, writing in 'The Fold' about the Baroque,  'the world is interpreted as a body of infinite folds and surfaces that twist and weave through compressed time and space'

The Baroque is movement, and this is why it interests me. 
Moving away from the idealism of the Renaissance it is more related to life and the turbulence and change it entails. 
It is closer to my experience of my insides, my doubts, my desires. 
The Baroque characterises a period of change and instability itself. So form communicates with reality. 

A characteristic of the Baroque is excess. It is the excess of flesh that demands to assert its own self. Art moving closer and closer to life instead of an ideal representation of it. 
The Baroque builds on the depth of pictorial space created by the Renaissance but adds to it the dimension of forwards. It is thus that its pulsating surface moves outwards to real space. 

In the development of my recent work I have been inspired especially by the work of Rubens. And especially by the painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels. This painting for me represents at the same time the joy of experiencing flesh and the pain and suffering its breaking free entails. 

Rubens, The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Study for the Fall

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa

Carravaggio

Fontanta di Trevi

Psychomachia 2015-2016

2015- 2016
Making space for painting

I wanted to go beyond the focus on the orifices characteristic of the previous work (see That That is Not on my site www.katerinapapazissi.com )  to  more painterly and juicy approach.
To attain a pictorial expansiveness, and assert materiality.
A desire of the flesh to expand, to see itself portrayed.

I had a vision (I think maybe a dream) of many folds, many bodily orifices creating their own kind of space perpetually in movement. This drawing resulted

Soft pastel on paper, 18x24cm

Thus result this series, subsequently entitled Psychomachia, which consists of drawings with soft pastel and smaller watercolours.

The drawings,  that oppose geometrical to organic abstract forms, make a transition from my past to my current work.

Still, in this series the body is trying to break free from the grids and hard structures that contain it.
Here is a sample of the drawings

The Battle I, 2016 87.5x125cm

The Flood, 2016 87.5x125cm

The Battle II, 2016 87.5x125cm

Quay, 2106 Watercolour and soft pastel on paper, 21x30cm

Untitled, 2016. Watercolour on paper 24x29cm

Gross anatomy, 2016 22x33cm

Space Oddity, 2014

A step further back to consider these three collages from 2014.

Watercolours of studies of skin are combined with photos of the burnt down buildings of Athens in 2008

They are actually a sort of battle between my painting and my photography and signal a transition to a more complex pictorial space. However, they were an anarchic strand at the moment, still within the time frame of the extreme close up focus period, the period of the That That is Not.

I love the combination of subdued skin tones with the grey tones of the burnt down buildings. The harsh actual composition is compensated by this subtle contrast.
Buildings are torn down by an invasion of flesh.
My idea of a revolution.
Rather spatial or sci-fi

They are all 35x50 cm each.