I have the impression that the world isn’t a sphere, but a disc. Even though the compact disc has had its time already, there are discs everywhere. Our lives are accompanied by a multitude of new ‘roommates’ in the form of technological devices—smartphones, printers, computers, tablets, etc.—and everyday we spend hours in a world that is first and foremost two-dimensional, graphic and flat. This world of the flat has become a starting place for many of my projects, which use a wide range of media to explore mechanical behavior, surface, layer and the complexities of subjectivity and objectivity. Literally, we live in a superficial world: a world existing or occurring at or on the surface. Despite the potential to use superficiality as a means of understanding flatness or counterpointing volume, we instead tend to regard it with a negative connotation. This negative reading psychologically handicaps us, hindering our ability to engage with notions of actual or metaphoric depth. My artworks are a response to this; they do not mourn the certain loss of reality or realness, rather they aim to work with flatness, surface and all the layers in between.

In the wall works with the title “Body Builder”, I am deeply interested in the repeated action, the use of resistance and the physicality of material and surface. Drawing, a media traditionally characterized by its flat and linear nature, becomes a means of playing with these notions and challenging our expectations. Through the repetition of mark a layered depth is produced—a flat sort of volume created by a seemingly simple action. Meanwhile, paper folds and bends into sculptural form and collaged figures do reps of their own with abstract shapes. In this, the work references the angular geometric structures of Constructivism and pays tribute to Modernism.

Though the work bears a distinct flatness, its focus is on the recognition of—and the building of—physicality and bodily experience. In fact, the body is located amid the flatness; it can be felt in the straining subjects, the unfolding geometries, the spillage of drawn marks and papers, and the inferred actions and gestures of the artist. The work questions, in a playful way, the tropes of Modernism by bringing together and exploring contemporary shifts in physicality and bodily perception and experience.