Rest 2018

Curator: Thiago Boecan, circa 2018, entitled “Rest." Mixed media, it seems, with ink and watercolor prominent. Editor: Immediately, there’s this enveloping feeling of…exhaustion. It’s the kind of tired that seeps into the very walls of the room, isn't it? The almost monochromatic palette really underscores that. Curator: The brushstrokes contribute, certainly. They’re incredibly loose, almost violent, especially in the bedclothes. It pulls focus, and your eye ricochets across the image trying to resolve a coherent form. Editor: Like the actual sensation of trying to sleep. Thoughts keep darting. Except here, it's manifested visually in the disjointed lines around the figure in bed. Though figure may be too strong a word... it's almost dissolved into the setting. Curator: Boecan’s application of tonal value definitely assists this. The somber grays and blacks of the surroundings are very close to those depicting the body. There’s very little to differentiate figure from ground, quite deliberately I would say. We can also analyze the opposition established between the composition and subject, the heavy brushwork contrasting the work title, "Rest." Editor: True, and even the light filtering through the window, captured in swathes of muted blue and green, can't quite lift the overall atmosphere. It makes you wonder about the rest itself – is it peaceful, or merely a heavy resignation? Are the sleepers in distress, perhaps, in fever? Or simply worn down from their every-day routine? The window offers us one way in and out, but at the same time, it gives nothing away, a purely symbolic gesture, just color without shape... Curator: A particularly successful reading, I believe. The materiality contributes strongly, the ink bleeding slightly into the watercolor, which in turn creates these unpredictable soft boundaries… The picture plane mirrors a restless mind, wouldn't you say? Editor: Precisely. And as for the actual, concrete moment in which Boecan was working? Well, that’s impossible for us to enter directly, but it serves as an evocative echo of our own harried inner lives.