Coniunctio I 1997

Manuel Neri’s "Coniunctio I" is a layered image with cool greys and stark blacks, punctuated by a fleshy pink figure, seemingly emerging from a dark abyss. I wonder what Neri was thinking when he laid down those first strokes? There’s an emotional quality to the scratching and smearing of the paint. It feels like he might have been trying to capture something raw and untamed. The black paint is applied in rough, sweeping gestures—almost violent in their application. The surface is built up, scraped away, and reworked, suggesting a process of constant questioning and revision. There’s a tension between the gestural abstraction of the background and the figurative representation of the woman. It reminds me of de Kooning or maybe even Guston, who also grappled with the push and pull between abstraction and figuration. It makes me think about how painting can be a way of wrestling with ideas, working through uncertainties, and finding new ways of seeing. Like Neri, we’re all just trying to make sense of the world, one brushstroke at a time.