EARLY STATES

The paintings gathered in EARLY STATES approach the figure as something provisional rather than fixed. Faces emerge from layered surfaces only to be interrupted, obscured or partially withdrawn again. Recognition remains possible, but never complete.

Across the four works, seeing and speaking become unstable conditions. Eyes appear through darkness, disappear beneath paint or are crossed by material interventions. Mouths remain visible yet interrupted, suspended between expression and silence. The painted figure is repeatedly brought into presence while access to it is simultaneously withheld.

The surfaces themselves carry this instability. Scraping, wiping, overpainting, dripping and repeated traces prevent the image from resolving into a conventional portrait. Figure and ground remain entangled; what appears solid can dissolve back into gesture and material.

EARLY STATES does not illustrate childhood in a literal sense. The title refers instead to provisional states of selfhood, perception and embodied memory — conditions that may exist before experience can be organised into a stable narrative.

In phase_0, the figure appears to emerge from the painted field. phase_02 introduces interference through signs, code and the obstruction of vision. In phase_03, the face becomes more materially present while direct encounter through the eyes is withheld. phase_04 shifts this interruption toward the mouth and the possibility of articulation.

Together, the works occupy a threshold between appearance and disappearance, visibility and concealment, expression and silence.

They are figures before language.