In documenting art on the basis of LANGUAGE:

We are human and true for the sake of MATTER, COLOUR and PERCEPTION,

At the crossroads of the lights, alert, attentively awaiting NOTHING

If you find it future and don't want to waste your time on a MESSAGE that means nothing,

consider that here we cast OUR SILENCE on fertile ground.

Here we have a right to do some prospecting, for we have NOTHING TO SAY,

We are ghosts drunk on energy, we dig into the GROUND.

Small verb (eg can)

Context/medium/theory/idea (eg contemporary landscape photography)

Interrogatory verb (eg re-examine)

Medium/Theory/Concept (eg notions of the sublime)

"How can tenebrism in painting be re-examined to explore notions of distance and the unknown?"

"How can the interplay of darkness and form in painting construct an experience of alienation and estrangement?"

"How can the interplay of darkness and absence in painting invoke mystery and resist linguistic containment?"

As an artist, I often struggle with low self-esteem (for many reasons), and I frequently wrestle with the discomfort of all the “navel-gazing” our work seems to demand.

Why should my voice matter when there are so many urgent problems in the world? Why should I be heard when others seem more intelligent, more capable, with more interesting stories to tell?

But this piece reminded me that using your voice is an act of courage. That self-judgment can be the loudest silencer. And that while it may sound like a platitude, it’s true: we are often far harsher with ourselves than we would ever be with anyone else.

Your experience is unique. That’s reason enough.

My practice explores the interplay between concealment and revelation, creating works that function as thresholds between the known and the unknown. Through painting, I investigate the tension between clarity and obscurity, presence and absence, structure and surrender.

Coming from a background in law, I was trained to seek resolution. Yet, in my artistic practice, I am drawn to what evades definition. My work resists fixed meaning, instead inviting ambiguity and interpretation. However, while embracing openness, I recognize the necessity of anchoring perception in form. My paintings resist pure abstraction, grounding themselves in suggestive shapes or familiar structures that provide an entry point for the viewer. This approach aligns with Heidegger’s notion of “earth” (a space of concealment and resistance) where meaning does not emerge through explanation but through presence and encounter.

In a world obsessed with clarity, analysis, and definitive answers, my work revels in all that escapes classification. It engages with what lingers at the edges of perception, what can be sensed but not fully grasped. Through shadow, reflection, and dissolution, I seek to create images that resist resolution, compelling the viewer to dwell in uncertainty. My paintings do not depict narratives or conclusions; instead, they suggest possibilities, acting as portals between the seen and unseen.

Informed by my ongoing fascination with the alien and the uncanny, my work resists the demand for definitive interpretation. I seek to create paintings that do not merely depict but affect. Works that, like monoliths or veiled figures, suggest a presence beyond what is immediately graspable. By embracing ambiguity and the unresolved while maintaining an anchor in form, I invite the viewer to engage with their own perception, recognizing that meaning is not fixed but continually unfolding.

Artist Statement (200 words)

1) Artist statement (350 words) and do a version for the portfolio that is 200 words max.

2) think on how to organise the work for the portfolio. I have started a document but pictures arent quite there yet - put timepieces in the meantime.

3) try to make 1 painting, preferably 2.

4) prepare and shoot 2 min video for application.

I try to recreate it.

its presence immediately suggests function and purpose, raising questions: What is it for? What’s inside? Who built it? What exists on top of it? Unlike purely amorphous forms, the cube holds an inherent sense of intent, yet by allowing it to disintegrate, I wanted to challenge the stability it represents. The shift from solidity to dissolution mirrors a broader preoccupation in my work: how form resists, how meaning wavers, and how perception is always in flux. This interplay between containment and dissolution, certainty and ambiguity invites an engagement with the limits of structure itself, questioning how much of what we see is defined, and how much is subject to perceptual transformation.

Simmel’s reflection on ALIENATION AS A CONDITION OF MODERNITY offers a lens through which to position my own work. My paintings engage with a contemporary experience of UNCERTAINTY AND DISPLACEMENT, mirroring how perception itself feels unstable, forms hover between recognition and dissolution like identity and meaning do in an era of liquidity and flux. In this way, my work is not only a personal investigation but also a response to the shifting psychological conditions of the present, where alienation is no longer just a side effect of modern life, but its defining structure.

Uncertainty - should I use this work more/explain it

Ned Khan / Olifur Ellisson

At the same time, a lot of people seem to like it, which makes me question myself even more. But maybe this is part of it—maybe this painting shows me something useful. It marks the edge of what I want. It teaches me that when the image is too settled, it loses that ambiguity I’m chasing. So even if it’s not “the one,” maybe it defines something. A parameter. A limit. Something to work against.

the process is laborious but not particularly difficult - quite fun actually.

I recently woke up with that line from the Communist Manifesto in my head.

It’s a quote that’s stayed with me ever since rereading the manifesto during my Postmodernism course at Goldsmiths, a moment when I began to understand its reach beyond politics into something more existential. I wondered why I was reminded of it, and I’ve been thinking about how it speaks not just to individual instability, but to the broader social condition I find myself working within. The sense that systems are dissolving (moral, cultural, environmental) that nothing feels fixed, and even what once felt sacred is being stripped of meaning or turned into commodity.

In my practice, I often work with ambiguity, dissolution, and the instability of perception...but perhaps this is also a response to the social texture of the present...where meaning feels harder and harder to grasp. Maybe this quote serves as a reminder that we are living through the collapse of certainties.

Interesting, I thought.

I have never have considered about actually creating a space - I just have the image 'float' somewhat. I suppose there was part of me that was consciously doing so as I wanted the object to feel like it was communicating from an area of existence beyond our physical realm. Nonetheless, why not try something new?

this painting (two panels) is the first time I actually created a room. see the corner on the right panel.

This is not the only thing which distinguishes this painting. in making my 'structures' which I have now done a few times, I drew something which looked like a baby carriage or a bassinet. It was by mistake but it made me think about the conversation around symbols we had throughout the crit - what if I leaned into this?

the drips are different from what would happen if one used turpentine and it was somewhat of a revelation...this is what Noah Davis did! I looked at his paintings carefully and had asked myself how he managed to do his drip effects because they were subtler than turpentine drips which are aggressive and deeper in the colour. I felt like I uncovered a painting secret.

His work is etherial and his colours nearly like 'washes' - could he have been just leaving into the oil? perhaps medium? Ive never use medium because I think it it dries too quick.

One big feedback was surrounding Eclipsed (above). I introduced it as somewhat of a failure because it looked too much like a 'pillow'. The feedback was - why not lean into the idea of symbols? A pillow has many subtleties as a 'thing'... rest/death etc.

I said 'I would like to stay away from 'semiotics' - the idea of the work is to transcend language - but I was told 'maybe you are limiting yourself'. this have me food for thought.

initially, I didn't think I would enjoy the work but standing in front of it this painter has a really engaging hand. the work really moves, it pulls you in.

the story behind the work was also very interesting. my partner was with me and he was mostly interested in that which makes me realise just how much story is as important as the work itself.

As I'm not a planner - and part of the work is subconscious engagement, I don't prepare my compositions. I go to the cyanotype machine in the making space and look around me for things which look interesting.

While contemporary painting often moves beyond traditional formats into installation, sculpture, or expanded practice, I found myself drawn back to the canvas...not out of conservatism, but because of the strange distance it creates. The canvas operates, for me, not as a window or a flat support, but as a threshold: a surface that holds presence, but resists full entry. There is a psychological charge in this. It feels present, material, but also removed, asking to be looked at but not fully accessed.

Rather than seeing this decision as limiting, I’ve come to think of it as a means to perpetuate the conceptual concerns I'm exploring.

I am not finding articles or theories about this specifically....must ask someone for direction on this.

...but I’m beginning to understand the canvas as more than a surface, it’s a stage for ambiguity, a space where the image can remain suspended, and the viewer’s attention is slowed. What matters is not what the canvas shows, but how it holds and keeps at a distance from the viewer.

His installations felt far from my own materials. But the more I tried to engage with it, the more I started to sense a connection. Like me, Kahn seems drawn to the invisible...to forces that resist explanation but shape experience nonetheless? There’s something in the way he collaborates with nature, lets it reveal itself through subtle shifts and patterns, that echoes my own interest in surrender, ambiguity, and the unseen logic behind things. Maybe that’s why... not because our work looks alike, but because we’re both trying to listen to something bigger than us.

The more I thought about it, the more I think I understand why I was asked to look into this. Eliasson isn’t just working with materials, he’s working with perception itself. He invites viewers to become aware of their own looking, to notice how their bodies interact with space and how experience is constructed in real time. This mirrors what I’m exploring in my own way, the instability of recognition, the space between knowing and not knowing, the moment when something familiar turns strange. Maybe the link isn’t scale, but SENSATION... how we feel when confronted with something we can’t fully name.

the object I'd found was a bunch of some type of cotton intermixed with threads.

I'd found it on the floor of the making space.

I picked it because I thought it would be interesting to try cyanotyping something which has a strange structure - quite wispy and potentially transparent. The result was really intriguing. Like a trace of something hiding further back on the surface.

My practice is gradually evolving into an exploration of light and space above all else. These are, after all, the elements that define volume to the eye.

I'd discarded the board to the side - literally had been sitting there for months.

So after the success of the most recent painting I decided to try the same methodology on this canvas. It was the only one I had left so I'd need to make the marked base work.

Albeit small, this painting opens up lots of new enquiries...the fact that there was acrylic on the base created an interesting relationship between layers. I also barely used any pigment in the top area, just some tinted Zest it. ITs a work which engages with a variety of textures in a way that my other paintings haven't. ITs interesting. I think I ought to explore this acrylic / oil combo again in the future. I don't love the 'flatness' of acrylic but perhaps, if worked ON (dry) I could come up with something interesting.

Something to think about.

For some reason (most likely as a result of some kind of emotional instability) I ended up erasing this piece.

What a shame. I've done this a few times this semester and I must stop myself because in retrospect, I see potential in the work I throw away.

I'm trying to remember what it was that made me erase it....I think It might have had to do with the proportions of the work. I think the space to the right felt too empty. Honestly however, I am uncertain.

The truth is, that however much I might conceptualise my work, I am still constantly in connection with a wordless aestheticism that lies somewhere mysterious in my brain. Why do certain images work and others don't? I try to rationalise this by using maths (i.e. always considering the golden ration in my compositions) but the truth is it doesn't quite solve the mystery.

She refers to Barthes' camera Lucida which I then look into..while a personal meditation on photography, its core ideas (particularly the punctum) extend far beyond the photographic image. The punctum is that elusive detail which “pricks” the viewer, resisting analysis yet evoking an often intimate response. This concept links to my own desire to create works that are not illustrative but affective, forms that carry an emotional or psychological charge without revealing precisely why. Like Barthes’ search for something beyond meaning, my practice explores how ambiguity, silence, and unresolved form can generate connection and recognition on a non-verbal level. In this way, Camera Lucida supports my belief that what cannot be fully explained often holds the most truth.

Although it might not appear to be, it is actually inspired be the cyanotype shown a few entries back on this timeline. Last week I thought about suggestion of space and light and this was an attempt at re-engaging with those ideas.

I must say I feel the work is quite interesting. I feel like it an 'easy painting' in that I think people will like it, potentially even buy it because it's easy-beautiful....but does it achieve what I want it to achieve? Somewhat. I can't help but feel it's not engaging enough. there is suggestion of light and shape but perhaps not enough. I also feel like I've seen this before but I don't seem to be able to find any references.

I’m trying to figure out whether I can lean into this effect to get closer to what I’m after...or if it’s veering too far into abstraction. The drips draw attention to the fact that it’s paint, that it’s a flat surface.

But I want to achieve depth, a suggestion of space, a thingness that feels real and present.

I spent days stuck on this. In the end, I had to put it aside...it was driving me mad.

From the cyanotype, I make a drawing, using them to intuitively respond to what remains and what has been lost. I then translate it into a painting, pushing it further into ambiguity. At each stage of this process, the object is abstracted, softened, and made less knowable. I’m interested in this gradual drift from recognition toward unknowing; how the thing becomes a feeling, a surface, a presence.

The object is a starting point, but it is never the subject. What matters is how it dissolves into something that resists language, yet still feels like it holds meaning. This slow process of removal allows me to explore how we recognise without identifying, and how painting can hold space for something undefined but felt.

Conceptually, it shares common ground with the cyanotypes. the object becomes reconfigured and reimagined through processes of layering and transformation. However, when I try to sketch based on shadows, the results feel disappointingly flat. Unlike the cyanotypes, which somehow retain a sense of depth and atmosphere, shadow-based works lack that spatial complexity. I might pursue a few more experiments, but off the cuff, this direction doesn’t feel as inspiring. There’s a kind of magic in the cyanotype’s tonal richness that shadows, at least in my current trials, haven’t yet matched.

The concept of immediacy in media theory delves into the desire for direct, unmediated experiences and how media can create the illusion of such immediacy, often obscuring the underlying reality. This is particularly relevant in an era where digital interfaces and virtual realities blur the boundaries between the real and the simulated.

Engaging with these perspectives informs my artistic practice, prompting me to create work that not only explores perception but also questions the nature of reality in an age of information overload and digital mediation.​

Reading his writing, I’m especially drawn to the idea that painting reaches toward what cannot be fully grasped. This echoes my own interest in ambiguity, presence, and withholding resolution. The notion that painting can return us to a slower, quieter mode of being (one that resists the image-saturation of contemporary life) feels relevant to what I’m trying to explore and the writings and thoughts Ive been having in the recent weeks.

I then create a cyanotype, using light to record the object’s presence without detailing its form. The cyanotype flattens it, silences it, leaving only a kind of shadow or trace. In doing so, it introduces a layer of abstraction and estrangement.

The object is no longer a tool or thing, it becomes a shape, a ghost, a suggestion of meaning.

It also made me think more deeply about how I want my work to be shown; whether there are specific conditions that would allow the paintings to be experienced more fully.

I thought about low lighting, quiet spaces, and how context shapes perception. That led me back to Rothko, and the conditions he designed for his Chapel: a space that slows you down, that holds ambiguity without distraction. It made me wonder what kind of space my paintings ask for and how the setting could echo the themes of slowness, ambiguity, and presence that run through the work itself.

Weirdly, considering it pretty much is the only thing that defines my generation.

Anyways, I'm aware I'm going to have to create an active instagram page. I'm no fool, it's virtually the one platform artists use...it is my project for the summer.

In the meantime I thought I'd make a website. giorgiadestefano.com was surprisingly available, so I bought that, and thought as time goes on I can embed my links onto the front page for the future.

I plopped in a bunch of my work but that's another thing I'll need to work on this summer - refining it and updating it.

And yet, I didn’t engage with it directly during either Investigate or Realise. This isn’t because it’s a topic I find uninteresting or distant from my constellation of references...in fact, quite the opposite.

Last semester, I focused my essay on the artist Solange Pessoa. What fascinated me most was her relationship to matter as something living, meaningful, and wise.

It was this quality in her work that initially drew me to making my own pigments and prompted me to consider materiality in a deeper way at the beginning of Investigate.

What unfolded, however, was a shift in focus, towards perception and the construction of meaning in relation to the image. Still, I can’t help but feel that spirituality is a close twin to this inquiry. Spirit, like perception, is embedded in the everyday yet never fully graspable.

Similarly, my thoughts have circled around what we see and what remains hidden. how form, shadow, and surface evoke a presence that is felt rather than know.

Perhaps in stepping away from the word spirit, I’ve been circling around it all along; through ambiguity, through the unknown, through attempts to translate what resists explanation.

This refusal, this holding of space for what might not materialise, mirrors my commitment to works that dwell in indeterminacy.

In a world driven by outcomes and legibility, my paintings and objects embrace suspension, the almost-formed, and the not-yet. Agamben’s influence allows me to think of these hesitations not as lacks, but as powerful spaces of resistance. In this sense, art becomes a site where potentiality is not exhausted , but held open.

And yet, it’s striking to realise that many of the questions I’m working through now were already there. Even in this early piece, I was playing with the boundary between abstraction and depiction. I also remember my obsession with halos (something I later re-termed as “auras,” as I shifted more into abstraction), a concept I explored in depth last semester. I’ve always been drawn to the space between visibility and invisibility, between matter and ephemerality, between presence and absence.

I suppose what fascinates me most is the absurdity of existence, that we live within structures and systems we take very seriously, yet their true meaning always slips out of reach. There’s something dark in that, but also something joyful. It makes me laugh. It makes me happy. My work might carry a certain weight, but at its core, it’s happy work. I’m happy that there is so much I don’t know. I’m happy that mystery still exists.