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SPINNING (NARRATIVE) THREADS IN THE SHADOWS, or the fine line between the personal and... the personal. The work of Ewa Finn

Ewa Finn, Guru, 2020/2021, oil on canvas, 230 x 200 cm

Mediathek Sorted

Media library
  • Unfinished Picture - Untitled, 220 x 180 cm
  • Iob - Unfinished Picture, 175 x 135 cm
  • Exhibition in Galerie Kungerkiez - Berlin, 2023
  • Exhibition in Galerie Kungerkiez - Berlin, 2023
  • Stoning - Oil on canvas, 220 x 150 cm, 2014/15
  • Sun Woman - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2022
  • Disintegration - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2022
  • Friendship - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 17 cm, 2021
  • Red eyes - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 17 cm, 2020
  • Sky above the war - Oil on canvas, 200 x 240 cm, 2021
  • Albino - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 17 cm
  • Brothers - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2021
  • Mother’s hair - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 15 cm, 2021
  • Reeducation II - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 47 x 62 cm, 2019
  • Untitled - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2020
  • Studio - Berlin 2024
  • Studio - Berlin 2024
  • Untitled - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 17 cm, 2020
  • False Pregnancy III - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 47 x 62 cm, 24 x 17 cm, 2024
  • False Pregnancy II - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 47 x 62 cm, 24 x 15 cm, 2021
  • False Pregnancy I - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 47 x 62 cm, 24 x 16 cm, 2021
  • Guru - Oil on canvas, 230 x 200 cm, 2020/21
  • Untitled - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 62 x 47 cm, 2014
  • Exhibition in K-Salon - Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2023
  • Exhibition in K-Salon - Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2023
  • Exhibition in K-Salon - Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2023
  • Studio - Berlin 2024
  • Albino - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2021
  • Siblings - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 47 x 62 cm, 2016
  • Mother’s grip - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 62 x 47 cm, 2020
  • Untitled - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 62 x 47 cm, 2016
  • Cain and Abel - Oil on canvas, 170 x 230 cm, 2015/16
  • Postcard from Babylon - Brush drawing, ink on paper 67 x 52 cm, 2022
  • Madonna - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 67 x 52 cm, 2018
  • Calling - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 62 x 47 cm, 2017
  • Playing Football - Oil on canvas, 230 x 170 cm, 2014
  • Studio - Berlin 2024
  • Catatonia, - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 17 cm, 2020
  • Untitled - Brush drawing, ink on paper, 24 x 17 cm, 2023
  • Ewa Finn - 2023
Ewa Finn, Guru, 2020/2021, olej na płótnie, 230 x 200 cm
Ewa Finn, Guru, 2020/2021, oil on canvas, 230 x 200 cm

Yes, that’s how it was; life was not allowed to be easy, you had to feel it, it was a good burden. (...) It is not that which is strong within us that makes us who we are, but rather the anomaly, the weak, that which we disown.
            Olga Tokarczuk (Empuzjon)

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
            James Baldwin

 

For many years, painting was looked down upon in contemporary art circles. Young artists felt that painting was too banal, a form of expression too closely associated with the earlier function of art. Now, however, painting is enjoying a big comeback. Over the centuries, it has proven its worth as the fundamental form of artistic expression (and is likely to remain so). After all, the current trend towards realism is a very tradition-oriented homage to the art of the past. The illusion of artistic freedom often remains simply that: an illusion. Artists reach for all means possible to realise their full potential. It has always been this way and it won’t change in the future. Vociferous collectives, manifestos and scandals are undoubtedly helpful when it comes to finding supporters or even sponsors, but the sinister present with its extreme visual overstimulation is gradually turning its back on such phenomena – and is instead embracing a greater sense calm, equanimity and moderation. Let us now consider the work of Ewa Finn in this context, in order to examine when contemporary painting takes on real meaning as a medium and to what extent the individuality of artists is reconcilable with the external world. 

Mieczysław Porębski once famously said that you can share your home with a picture, but you have to live with an artist. After I decided, therefore, to allow a picture to move in with me, I began to pay careful attention to my potential cohabitant. However, I was not fooled by the gentle nature of the first impression. My instinct told me that this wouldn’t be so easy, that there is much more to be discovered, that Ewa’s pictures contain a particular quality that is almost impossible to grasp and which is certainly not fleeting. The world that she creates is and remains secretive to a certain degree, even though the symbols she uses are not that far removed from reality. In her works, the artist expresses what is important in today’s world and to her personally. For her, experiences that she has had in real life play an essential role and are the foundations on which her here and now are based. Yet of equal, if not greater, importance is her highly intimate there and then ... 

The great Alfred Hitchcock liked to baffle his film students by telling them that it was necessary to start with an earthquake and then to allow the tension to increase very slowly. Ewa Finn’s paintings cause emotional associations to arise, and yet each and every (attentive!) observer is confused by the ominous calm that they exude. When one takes a closer look at the inner life of the paintings, however, it becomes evident that the calm is just an illusion. Might it be that the artist’s need to define herself in relation to the past is expressed in this vision – a vision in which problems are never viewed as black-and-white contrasts, even though we are well aware that it is precisely from such contrasts that dangerous tensions arise? 

Buddhism teaches us that a positive balance between our thoughts and actions enables us to be reborn (at some time in the future) in one of the 26 heavens. The Great Aeon comes to an end, in order to be able to begin again. All that is needed is the necessary strength to do so. It also teaches us that we can preserve our memories of a previous life, and when these memories spark up – under ideal conditions – art is created. Then, however, there is an unavoidable dissonance between belonging and freedom... Well, freedom isn’t something to be given as a gift. We have to take it for ourselves. Fortunately, the artist has already put the painful search for identity in freedom behind her. We cannot retrieve the past, but that is not always necessary; art enables us to prove that it existed.

After an intensely expressive phase with strong colours and textures, the narrative in the contemporary painting of Ewa Finn shifts towards a silent dialogue between the past and the present. She mainly finds inspiration in all kinds of unusual, bizarre, absurd, even disgusting situations. She bows down to them – yet at the same time, she rejects the idea that only the dark side of power can have a tangible impact on human life. Or is it perhaps precisely the opposite? Certainly, our sensual world never allows itself to be easily categorised. The recollections of events experienced and the play with our self-image are accompanied by a deep silence. This raises the question as to whether this silent dialogue is rather a discovery or a concealment of one’s own presence in a fretful world in which it is easier to hurt others than to support them. Or is it after all an attempted escape from the burden of one’s own experiences? The search for a safe harbour? Symmetry or expansion? Without shying away from attempting to answer prosaic questions, the artist turns to the familiar, realistic form and, like a chronologist, meticulously registers everything that has been experienced that has moved and touched her. Often, it is banal everyday situations, which nevertheless contain a certain paradox.

To a certain degree, the sense of this art emerges from the entanglement of the obvious in contexts, from the conscious decision not to employ decorative, conventional symbols of the mysterious. The artist creates her own world, which is inhabited in part by true beings from real life, but also by fantastical mythical creatures. In her realm of images, she also makes space for our little brothers and sisters – animals with whom she communicates and in so doing creates a shared space for all. Whether or not this is an artistic dialogue or an artistic monologue: in light of the moral disintegration among humanity, her voice in the fight for animal rights rings clear and true, becomes audible. 

Her works contain dimensions which, when decoded, do not exactly cause us to reflect in a way that enables us to take heart. The theme here is the extent of violence and the wretched state of humanity in these frightening times. Her art comes to us like a kind of message in a bottle, and is more than just a short letter. It is a specific communication to one particular recipient – to you, looking at the picture at this moment. You are looking at it, but do you also see it? 

Ewa Finn chooses the difficult path of accepting all kinds of otherness; her work exudes sympathy for all entanglements in the conflicts of this world. This artistic analysis of feeling is reflected in a conscious abandonment of intensive colours in favour of matt tones. It is like the tender touch of an awareness of the destruction of the Universe that goes beyond normative barriers. Artistically, this is expressed by a spot of colour, often softened to a gentle matt with multiple white, light blue and aquamarine tones. Even for astute observers, multiple layers of oil paint, applied like a gossamer tissue, appear as a single, light, stroke of the brush. And the light... the light that horizontally extends the space without end, thus increasing the impact of the emotional tension. 

Ewa does not bow to the dictates of fashion in the art world and is not afraid of being accused of anachronism. The ascetic, deceptively simple, almost minimalist style of her paintings, the gentle stroke of her ink drawings, the conscious meagreness of form, make her works easy to recognise. And even if the most subtle of subtleties still needs to be continuously perfected, it is worth reminding ourselves of the classic quote here: It is in limitation that the master first shows himself (J. W. Goethe, The Sonnet).

Yes, there really are life stories that swim against the tide while worlds silently fall apart. Like many artists who are constantly searching for their own path, it was in Berlin that Ewa Finn found the right environment for her artistic observations. Her works point to the most urgent problems of today’s world, yet although they express feelings, they are by no means moral sermons or simple messages. Rather, they demonstrate the possibilities of art in the face of “evil”. If we again consider the quote by Prof. Mieczysław Porębski about “cohabitation” with artists, it is art that needs the experienced observers in order to fully develop its impact. Very often, it all begins with a short and yet very specific moment. This single moment of seeing leaves behind a certain magic of intention. It is something that cannot be defined more specifically, that twists and becomes blurred, and yet offers a broad spectrum of possible interpretations, of creative decisions that cannot be foreseen.

 

Magda Potorska, April 2024

 

 

Solo exhibitions

2011 Club der polnischen Versager, wenig malerei, Berlin 

2015 Dorothea Konwiarz Stiftung, Unter heiterem Himmel, Berlin 

2017 Atelier Maryna Baranovska, Berlin 

2019 48 Stunden Neukölln, Atelier Ewa Finn, Berlin

2021 BWA JELENIA GÓRA, CICHE GŁOWY, Jelenia Góra, Polen

2023 K-Salon, Windstille Nacht, Berlin

 

Group exhibitions (selected)

2007 Haus am Kleistpark, drei Radikale, Berlin 

2010 Gehag FORUM, Klassentreffen, Berlin 

2010 Atelierhof Kreuzberg, es knallt nicht es rockt nicht, Berlin 

2011 Haus am Lützowplatz, la Cabane*, Berlin 

2011 K-Salon, clair-obscur, Berlin 

2012 Galerie Schwartzsche Villa, Ziemlich graue Seelen, Berlin 

2012 K-Salon, Zeichnungen, Berlin 

2013 Projekt Kino Ost, … davon geht die Welt nicht unter …, Berlin 

2014 Stiftung Starke im Löwenpalais, Survivors, Berlin 

2014 Willner Brauerei, Berlin die Sonne gelb, Berlin

2015 K-Salon, Auf der Suche nach sich selbst, Berlin

2016 Kunsthalle m3, Thermik, Berlin 

2016/17 Gehag FORUM, Berlin 

2017 48 Stunden Neukölln, Morgens, Mittags, Abends, Berlin 

2017 Projektraum Ventilator, Super Power Woman Show Nr. 2, Berlin 

2017 Max-Liebermann-Haus, Wolfgang Patrick Go(o)d Speed, (Gastkünstlerin), Berlin 

2017 Willner Brauerei, Ungemütlich V, Berlin 

2019 Forum Factory, Ungemütlich VI, Berlin

2019 Haus 104 Flughafen Tempelhof, Offen, Berlin

2020 Online Ausstellung – FEMALE GAZE bei Alexander Ochs Private

2021 ALEXANDER OCHS PRIVATE, Female GAZE, Berlin

2022 ARTraumBERLIN, „OTHERS - WUNDERSAME WESEN“, Berlin

2022 ARTraumBERLIN, „THANATOS - GEVATTER“, Berlin

2023 Kungergalerie, Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt (mit Mara Wagenführ), Berlin

2023 K-Salon, Einfallen, Berlin