Authorship of the Past

"The Past is the Author of the Present. We cannot go back, we can only see the result. Frankly, I don't want to go back to the same river a second time. But let's face it, the past has a certain appeal. If it didn't, we wouldn't watch historical movies and go on excavation tours. But when we walk through ruins, we're not taken back 1,000 years. We only see traces of the past. More precisely, we see the present, which is shaped by the past. The Authorship of the Past is my Op. 1 :), a series of paintings I did a few years ago to convey this sense of the past in the present. All the paintings in the series are overpaintings of my earlier works (from my student days). I used an eraser instead of a brush. This captured the expression of the brushstroke, but let the existing texture of the paint work. It was as if the old painting was choosing its own future image. The new layers of paint held the texture and slipped through in some places, leaving a piece of the old painting visible. I didn't feel like a free and omnipotent creator, but on the one hand like a ruthless and mechanical Time and on the other hand like an almost helpless observer of the changes. The only thing I was free to choose was the colour. I wanted there to be a colour dialogue between the old and the new." - JG