Coniunctio I 1997

Manuel Neri made this painting, Coniunctio I, with what looks like broad brushstrokes and a limited palette. The colour is not so much about describing something as setting a mood. It's about the process, the act of covering the surface. Look at the juxtaposition of the raw, almost scrubbed-in background and the tentative figure. There's a tension there between revealing and concealing. The figure emerges, but is also lost. The red around her mid-section looks almost like a wound. What does it mean? I think Neri’s playing with the idea of the body as a site of experience. Painters like Giacometti come to mind. Artists who used the figure to express something about the fragility and impermanence of being. This isn't a portrait in the traditional sense. It's more like an echo, a whisper of a human presence. I love that ambiguity, the way it invites us to bring our own stories and feelings to the surface.