Summoning the Divines

“Summoning the Divines” does not discuss the existence of God, but the fate of summoning itself: in an unresponsive world, why should art still speak out? The answer is: once summoning ceases, reality retreats into private feeling or falls entirely under the classificatory systems of technology and the market. Summoning is an act of taking place — it reserves a space for a reality that is yet undefined and undecided.

Thus, art insists on summoning the world not out of faith, but as a minimal political gesture. It upholds that reality remains open to discussion, to seeing, and to transformation; it refuses to let the world exist only as a market price, algorithmic labels, and data. The meaning of summoning may lie not in being answered, but in keeping the world open.

The Passion series takes its source from a great invention — the smartphone screenshot. All the images are translated from the mobile phone conversations we constantly forward, and from screenshots that have been cropped, edited, and redacted. Free, gestural writing pours the full spectrum of emotions from online chat into the paintings.

This series is an intense response to the mental states embedded in social media, and above all, a release and catharsis of emotion. Here, abstract expressionism finds a new battlefield and new energy. The artist creatively engages with our datafied reality.