THE WORLD WOULD BE NOTHING
GOSIA MACHON
GOSIA MACHON
THE WORLD WOULD BE NOTHING
JUNE 8 - JULY 5, 2023
In my paintings, I invent fictional places and beings - places of complete wilderness where humans are not present. I try to represent the (non-human-) beings — plant, animal, landscape — as equal counterparts. Personalities without human attributes. They are here, as am I. Probably with very similar sensations, needs, and fears. With a wisdom older than my thinking mind.
Without them… the world would be nothing.
Within me is a deep desire to say good-bye to the outdated image of humans, so other living beings on this planet can be given more value.
Besides my humility and reverence towards their superior intelligence, their wild instinct and their absolute innocence, there is this great amazement — I am astonished by their otherness; the mysterious, ghostly, and sacred....
When I speak of nature or wilderness, I don't mean only nature "out there". I also think of the nature within ourselves, in us human-beings. This elemental, wild part of our identity — our body, our psyche, our destiny, which is found under the gauzy crust of our civilization, and which decisively determines all our lives.
"For I was once already boy and girl,
Thicket and bird, and mute fish in the waves."
— Empedocles (460 b.c.), On Nature, fragment 117
- Gosia Machon
Portrait of the artist in front of Heimweh (homesickness), an installation from her solo-exhibition at Lyra-Raum in Hamburg 2022.
Gosia Machon, I do it again, 2022, ink on paper, 7 1/2 x 11 in (19 x 28 cm)
Gosia Machon, Stranger than beauty, 2023, ink on paper, 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in (40 x 30 cm)
Photo by David Fischer Baglietto
Gosia Machon
My kind, 2022
ink and gouache on paper
25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
65 x 50 cm
Gosia Machon
The Moose, 2022
ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in
32 x 24 cm
Gosia Machon
Romance, 2023
ink on paper
15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in
40 x 30 cm
Gosia Machon
In me, 2023
ink on paper
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in
30 x 21 cm
Gosia Machon
She, 2022
ink and gouache on paper
25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
65 x 50 cm
Gosia Machon
Mothhead, 2023
ink on paper
11 1/2 x 12 1/2 in
29.2 x 31.8 cm
Gosia Machon, Are You real, 2023, ink on paper, 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in (40 x 30 cm)
Gosia Machon
About You, 2023
ink on paper
39 1/4 x 27 1/2 in
100 x 70 cm
Gosia Machon
Portrait, 2023
ink on paper
15 3/4 x 11 1/2 in
40 x 29 cm
Gosia Machon
Golden choir, 2023
ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in
32 x 24 cm
Gosia Machon
The world would be nothing, 2023
ink on paper
15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in
Gosia Machon
Kinship, 2023
ink on paper
39 1/4 x 27 1/2 in
100 x 70 cm
Gosia Machon
Warm sentiments, 2023
ink on paper
16 1/2 x 11 3/4 in
42 x 30
Gosia Machon, If not now whenever, 2023, ink on paper, 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in (50 x 70 cm)
I never represent concrete places or people, not the external reality...
I draw from subconscious, inner sources and images. The area that cannot be photographed, and can hardly be described in words. This swan, this tree, this flower - I have not seen them anywhere with my eyes, but the sensation they express, it exists, it is real.
Every time anew I find it almost unbelievable that this is possible: to represent something that is actually invisible – sensations, moods, emotions, conditions, confusions: The reality beneath the visual surfaces that continually influence our perception of the world.
Sometimes I have the impression that a painting is like a stage for the protagonists of our psyche. Everything we experience — physically, emotionally and mentally — can be a performer on this picture-stage. By this I don't just mean the figures - everything is equally important in the picture and can speak to us; a plant, an unknown entity, a color. There is no hierarchy between the elements, there is no gender. In the painting we can find ourselves in every element.
It is an incessant play with our own abysmality. With abysmality I do not mean anything dark or somber. I mean the deep and strange stalactite caves within ourselves, the microcosm of our spirit, our psyche. There, everything is possible. There I can be anything: a breath of air, a donkey, a puddle. There I find the happiness, the joy and the sense of diving deeper and deeper into the unfathomable magnificent colorful lake of the unknown.
It is the processual acceptance of our reality, which is full of unknowing, contradictions, mysteries and oddities, that it is to be observed and admired, but in no case unraveled or understood.
- Gosia Machon
Gosia Machon
Blurred memory, 2022
ink on paper
25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
65 x 50 cm
Gosia Machon
The dreams, 2023
ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in
32 x 24 cm
Gosia Machon
Leaving Home, 2022
ink on paper
11 x 7 in
28 x 18 cm
Gosia Machon
Simple pleasures, 2023
ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in
32 x 24 cm
Gosia Machon
Silence, 2022
ink on paper
11 x 7 3/4 in
28 x 20 cm
Gosia Machon
Everyday, 2023
ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in
32 x 24 cm
Gosia Machon
Frightened child, 2022
ink on paper
7 1/2 x 11 in
19 x 28 cm
Gosia Machon
Trying my best, 2023
ink on paper
19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
50 x 40 cm
Gosia Machon
Love is love, 2023
ink on paper
25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in
65 x 50 cm
GOSIA MACHON
IN ME, 2023
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Wiliam Turner 300 gm paper
15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in
40 x 30 cm
Limited Edition of 10, numbered and signed by the artist
$ 180.00
Photo by David Fischer Baglietto
Gosia Machon's figurative abstract paintings and drawings are created with intuitive processes and are driven by an inner archive. Her work draws from unconscious, autobiographical and collective experiences and memories. It repeatedly revolves around the longing for untouched nature. This nature can be a biotope or a plant, and refers equally to the unfathomable meanders of our human psyche and body – the piece of wilderness within ourselves.
Machon graduated from HAW Hamburg (Department Design) in 2008. She has since exhibited her work and projects internationally at galleries and art institutions in Berlin, Paris, Antwerp, Warsaw, Istanbul, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and Kyoto. Her recent exhibitions include Nominees at Kunsthaus, Hamburg 2023; A room for ones own at Clint Roehnisch Gallery, Toronto, 2022; Lieb Lieb Leid Lied at HilbertRaum, Berlin, 2021; and Durch das Getümmel at Kunstverein Ellwangen, 2020.
She is a lecturer for drawing and painting at German art schools, including HAW Hamburg and Burg Giebichtenstein Kunstchochschule Halle; and the recipient of art awards and grants, most recently the Hamburg Grant for Contemporary Art, Ministry of Culture and Media 2023; and the Heitland Honneur Celle 2023.
GOSIA MACHON
Born 1979, Poland
Lives and works in Hamburg, Germany