Looking tired but energized, 2009

by Ute Bertog

11 x 14" • Acrylic, gouache, contact paper on board $nfs

I am a painter intrigued by abstraction and its reluctant relationship to language. In paintings and text I focus on the process of revising pre-existing print material to create opportunities for meaning to slip into other guises. My current project starts out as a creative reading project. Pre-existing texts from the news media form the basis for erasures, where the majority of words are canceled out to disrupt a given storyline. The result is an altered and fragmented text full of whimsy and allusion to an outside narrative. Subsequent paintings push this line even further by continuously revising these texts. Covering, rewriting, tracing, scraping, cutting are all procedures that slowly transform the text until the ability to read and instantly understand is either severely undermined or completely taken away. The act of looking shifts back and forth between seeing and reading. Color plays an important role in this transition and is used imaginatively and intuitively.