Fluid Contradictions
Artist Statement - Penelope Civi
Fluid Contradictions explores the idea of multi-rhythmic abstraction. This approach to painting reflects my observation that the everyday experience of life is multi-rhythmic, with rhythm able to assume an expansive meaning that has a presence in all aspects of life.
The music theorist William Sethares describes “rhythmic phenomena as expressing a kind of meaning that is difficult to express in words.”
I am interested in the materiality of paint and its power to visualise diverse rhythmic sensations. However I acknowledge that viewer experiences and perceptions are non-normative. In my studio practice, I experiment with the application of atmospheric rhythms in the form of gradients and colour passages, and gestural or active mark-making. An underlying question is how these disparate rhythms may coexist in pictorial space and still retain their voices. To me, the artistic process holds a mysterious dynamism that emanates from the encounter between the playful unpredictability of paint, chance and my own responsive actions.
The conceptual ideas connected to rhythm and multi-rhythmic painting were initially explored in my masters research in reference to its alignment with interdisciplinary philosophical dialogue and as a mode of thinking. This research highlighted to me, rhythmic orientation as a stance that embraces multiple perspectives and seeks inclusivity in the negotiation of differences that exist within frameworks of diversity and multiplicity. As an artist I am cognisant of this same open fluidity of mind in the creative negotiations and solutions that have a presence in art-making, as well as the way in which life can be approached.
February 2025
