Ichor De | con | struction by Enjoy AZU

Ichor De|con|struction

Ichor De|con|struction 2017

Time Size: 20 x 20 cm

On the transience and the fluidity of time ...

* In Greek mythology, Ichor (/ˈaɪkər/ or /ˈɪkər/; Ancient Greek: ἰχώρ) is the ethereal golden fluid that is the blood of the gods and/or immortals. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it because Nobody else will.

- Mahatma Gandhi -

Rain Drops Yellow Size: 10 x 10 cm

Heartbeats Size: 10 x 10 cm

El clavel del poeta Size: 10 x 10 cm

In Amsterdam - About Amsterdam - For Amsterdam to my friends and family

How happy am I to have crossed paths with you all … Who inspire me!

Peacock Size: 20 x 20 cm

Intro Influenced by the philosophy of Derrida, the Rorschach inkblot tests and J. Kerner’s klecksography, AZU introduces a new way of interpreting art by creating a dialogue between text and abstract paintings, to reflect on time and the way it is experienced. AZU sees abstract art and poetry as one, and deliberately produces paintings which, like poetry are open to interpretation thus highlighting the correlation between the two art forms in an attempt to bring poetry closer to a wider audience. As each person sees and finds different meanings in an abstract painted canvas, the text is also coloured and entwined in labyrinth-like shapes, engaging the reader in a game of exploration. Like life, the colours and words are fluid and shifting, the canvases in constant unrest, each wholly dependent on the eye of the spectator. Ichor De | con | struction invites self-reflection and reconciliation with the world(s) that are shattering - inside and around us - into little bits of memories of a present past … into a moment that can never be captured. Ichor contemplates on how time slips away - through our hands, like sand between our fingers, and challenges us to live before the last grain falls.

Air Size: 20 x 20 cm

Earth Size: 20 x 20 cm

Fire Size: 20 x 20 cm

Water Size: 20 x 20 cm

Inception A few years ago, a colleague walked into my studio one morning, holding two pieces of canvas with relief acrylic patterns on them. I was immediately intrigued and asked her how she creates her art. The technique was simple. It was like a kiss of canvas paper and acrylics - the imprint was fantastic (like the taste of all kisses but that is a different story…).

Method Acrylics are dropped onto one canvas and another canvas is placed on top. You then shift and turn the canvases and separate them. If you only have a single piece of canvas, fold it in half and move the sheets a bit, so that the acrylic smudges and forms a mirror reflection on the two halves. The two canvases or, the piece of canvas is then unfolded so that the acrylics can dry.

Insight What I liked was the simplicity of the process and the beautiful result. I loved the texture and the random patterns and shapes that were open to interpretation. Everything was there and nothing, since “everything has to do with your insight” as my Master’s supervisor once told me. And this is exactly what fascinated me, the fact that one can see anything they want depending on their emotions, feelings and experiences but most importantly, one can also somehow transform themselves and the world(s) around them.

Narcissus Size: 20 x 20 cm

Orchid Size: 20 x 20 cm

Lilac Size: 20 x 20 cm

Carnations Size: 20 x 20 cm

Rose Size: 20 x 20 cm

Lily Pads Size: 10 x 10 cm

Psychology Years later I came across an article and some inkblots of the Rorschach test, a psychological test attempting to analyse personality characteristics and emotional functioning. I was always interested in psychology, so saw that this way of painting might be a means of exploring oneself, through allusions, memories, imagination and sometimes even delusions. I soon realized that I was right. Every individual reads each painting based on their way of seeing. While conducting my research on inkblots, I came across “Klecksography ... the art of making images from inkblots … by Justinus Kerner, who included klecksographs in his books of poetry”. This is exactly what I was looking for! A mixture of poetry and paintings, where poems and canvases are side-by-side … bringing poetry closer to a wider audience. Both the Rorschach test and Klecksography are studies of imagination and consciousness, since once the canvases are separated or the piece unfolded and dried, one is invited to guess and relate the resemblance of the print to other objects, feelings and emotions. “The inkblots tend to resemble images because of apophenia, the human tendency to see patterns in nature”.

Jouissance Size: 10 x 10 cm

Santorini Size: 10 x 10 cm

Coral Size: 20 x 20 cm

Appropriation Having experimented for quite a while, I found many different techniques which achieve relief paintings on a canvas with acrylics. Though the process of painting is fast, one needs to know when and where to stop. I stop when I see something. Sometimes I do not even know what it is until days after. Sometimes it is a memory that has surfaced, some other times an emotion, or a shape. Everything, anything and nothing. My intention was to create abstract relief paintings on which the acrylic is moulded into shapes, and colours materialize by taking forms, thus creating fantastic worlds, scenes, sceneries and moments. However, what is important is not the tale that I found and created but the worlds the audience finds or imagines while looking at one piece, or the ones they choose to put together, or in another asymmetric synthesis. Colours and texture are very important in this project. Every canvas is a result of elements uniting and separating, whether this is two canvases, or a cork on canvas, or just the spatula curving the lines and the shapes. I deliberately separate the canvases that would together form an inkblot or a klecksograph, and work on each canvas giving it a new existence. Each canvas is unique in its structure. There is no way of reproducing it and, like our memories, no way of recapturing the moment. Drawing from Plato’s Symposium, the separation of canvases is also a metaphor for our quest for love and the other half of our soul. “It is said that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another, that they feel unified and would lie with each other in unity and would know no greater joy than that”.

Separation Size: 10 x 10 cm

Perspective When it comes to vision, I wanted to achieve a multidimensional effect. Not just to look at a piece in two dimensions but give it a 3D effect and get the audience engaged with the piece, have them turn it around and look at its surface from all perspectives. That way they could also see the curves and different shapes on the canvas, and maybe even a completely new painting, or different paintings in one. I also wanted to create a piece one cannot only see but can also feel. My goal was, and is, to seduce the audience in a game - unlike most art pieces that one cannot touch, invite them to feel the painting and its energy with as many senses as possible.

Theater The setting is very theatrical. The canvases are put together in an asymmetric synthesis thus forming a big abstract painting called ‘Ichor’, while the little canvases of various titles represent the cells of memories and experience, running through our veins and our bodies. ‘Ichor’ could also be viewed as the Tree of Life and the canvases, the leaves changing colours and falling as seasons pass. Once a spectator grabs a leaf they identify as one of their cells, or a cell they want to obtain, the leaf is gone forever and takes a new shape, name and life. ‘Ichor’ gradually deconstructs, slowly changing shape and form, and is ultimately destroyed as time goes by.

Cyclades Size: 20 x 20 cm

Aeolus Size: 20 x 20 cm

Sea Landscape Size: 20 x 20 cm

Star Shower Size: 10 x 10 cm

Greece Size: 20 x 20 cm

The Couple Size: 20 x 20 cm

The story Ichor talks about time and fluidity. The canvases are like the leaves on an autumn tree falling, deconstructing, and decomposing. The colours are like the colours of the seasons and represent how our emotions shift in shades of time. It talks about experience, about letting go of fear and daring to go after the things we always wanted but were afraid to chase. Ichor talks about pain and healing in time. It is about love and its restoration after a winter of emotions. Like the trees, one needs to get stripped of everything, to be bare, and to come back afresh, with new colours and odours, and shine like the sun, like gold. Ichor is about losing ourselves and finding who we are again. It is about growing up and being young, about starting over again and again. Everything is there: nature (Peacock, Honeycomb, Snowflake, Raindrops, Ocean), its four elements (Water, Fire, Air and Earth), its flowers (Narcissus, Orchid, Rose, El clavel del Poeta, Lily Pads) and birds (Bird of Paradise), the beautiful landscapes (Sea landscapes, Santorini) and the tiny impressions we are lucky to glimpse under water (Coral I-II-III), on the trees (Winter Berries), from above (Cyclades, Greece) and everywhere around us (Agate, S teal, Tiffany); the people we meet with and separate from (The couple); our feelings and emotions (Desire, Lust, The Kiss, Separation, Jouissance), our fears (Time); our myths and tales (Atlantis, Aeolus, Labyrinth, The Night, Swan Lake, The Snow Queen) … everything that is burning inside us. Ichor is a puzzle breaking into little pieces and making a whole. We see the shimmering of the gold sun on the sea and remember the summers and the nights of Star Showers; see the flowers and recall our long-lost childhood through the smells of Lilac and Carnations; our trips with our parents, the first Heartbeats and the loves now gone (In Love I-II-III). Our dreams, achievements and realizations. Our memories of who were and who we wanted to be. Who we now want to be.

Everything is there and everything fluid. The shapes, the colors, forms, angles … Everything subject to change. All our experiences scattered like the little canvases waiting to be reshuffled and reborn in new hands. Our hands; that will re-arrange them, and will give them a new existence, a new life. Everything is a miracle, a wonder and we the little gods living in a fast-paced world that shutters, shrinks and expands before, inside and outside our bodies, while Ichor is eternal and runs through everything. The work draws from many academic disciplines but above all it is a poetic synthesis that wishes to unite painting and text and seize all those ideas which constantly lure and escape us. That which is always there but can never be captured.

Desire Size: 20 x 20 cm

Philosophy Influenced by Derrida’s Deconstruction, AZU explores the relationship between text, form, colours, shape and meaning, through an asymmetrical synthesis that though fragmented can also be viewed as a whole. AZU uses the term ‘deconstruction’ to underline the complexity of artistic language, its elusiveness and impossibility; and wishes to demonstrate the unlimited, unsettling, subjective elements of art. Through Ichor – De | con | struction, AZU wants to challenge and escape contemporary art definitions and to re-evaluate modern aesthetics by questioning what art is, what it is becoming and the importance of the artist. As words escape definition and shift meaning depending on position, so art pieces are undefined and differentiated once placed next to each other, forming new meanings all together. Indeed “there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total”.

Agate Size: 20 x 20 cm

Honeycomb Size: 20 x 20 cm

The Kiss Size: 20 x 20 cm

Bird of Paradise Size: 20 x 20 cm

Tiffany Size: 20 x 20 cm

Lust Size: 20 x 20 cm

About AZU AZU believes in the death of the artist once a work is completed, as art does not belong to the people who make it but those who really need it. Only once the artist is removed, can the audience interpret the pieces through their own senses and experiences. AZU is gender – nation – colour – sex – religion – language – age LESS What is important is the emotions the work creates inside us. Some say that art is about revealing something we did not know about ourselves or the world. AZU views art as magic, a medium by which you connect people with your world and the worlds inside them. Worlds they never guessed existed.

AZ is U

In Love I Size: 20 x 20 cm

In Love II Size: 20 x 20 cm

In Love III Size: 20 x 20 cm

Enjoy!AZU

The Night Size: 20 x 20 cm

Atlantis Size: 10 x 10 cm

Swan Lake Size: 10 x 10 cm

The Snow Queen Size: 20 x 20 cm

Labyrinth Blue Size: 20 x 20 cm

Snowflake Size: 20 x 20 cm

Winter Berries Size: 20 x 20 cm

Key words Derrida, Rorschach’s test, Inkblots, klecksography, klecksographs, Justinus Kerner, Plato, Symposium, paintings, acrylics, poetry, colours, texture, shape, phycology, philosophy, art, dreams, emotions, enjoyazu, popeeyee, trelaplein

Credits all photos © Alexandros G. Thomas http://popeeyee.com/ Ichor the poem and text by AZU http://enjoyazu.com/ text editor: Todor Bashovshi

all quotes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Size: 10 x 10 cm

Z Size: 10 x 10 cm

U Size: 10 x 10 cm

List of Paintings

Aeolus Agate Air Bird of Paradise Carnations Coral Cyclades Desire Earth Fire Greece Honeycomb In Love I In Love II In Love III Labyrinth Lilac Lust Narcissus Orchid Peacock Rose Sea Landscape Snowflake

20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20

The Couple The Kiss The Night The Snow Queen Tiffany Time Water Winter Berries Atlantis El clavel del poeta Heartbeats Jouissance Lily Pads Rain Drops Yellow S Teal Santorini Separation Star Shower Swan Lake A Z U

20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 20 x 20 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10 10 x 10

S Teal Size: 10 x 10 cm

Enjoy!