Kolner Serie # 11 

Curator: Welcome. We’re looking at “Kolner Serie #11”, a drawing by Maria Bozoky. She primarily works with ink in pieces like this one to create abstraction within figuration. Editor: Oh, it looks like raw energy barely contained. The monochromatic palette really drills down to the foundational marks, that insistent linework. Curator: Yes, the high contrast monochrome simplifies form. Notice the textures, from solid, brushed areas to loose hatches of ink and finely inscribed details. There is an ambiguous figure depicted amidst the tangle. Is this the artist portraying their mental landscape, or the state of Cologne? Editor: Good question. Looking closer, those dense, scratched-in lines bordering the upper corners seem to convey urban sprawl and tension, which then melts into that… is it a head? A face in chaos, sort of hiding? I see anxiety, maybe isolation. Curator: The "figure," or perhaps a portrait fragment, embodies existentialist unease. I find the rawness deeply evocative. Consider the expressive marks, laden with symbolic possibilities. Are these fragmented lines representative of fractured cultural values after post-war trauma? Or more of an abstract expression of trauma in general? Editor: Trauma, definitely. It makes me think about how individual identity gets built, or maybe dissolved, when we carry these unnamable wounds... Bozoky’s made something powerfully vulnerable and, dare I say, kind of brave, out of just ink and paper. Curator: Indeed, her symbolic representation suggests that universal concepts like personhood or cityscapes cannot be captured in the solid way we think. The unstable shapes force us to confront preconditioned definitions. It evokes the ephemerality of self and cultural heritage. Editor: Thanks, I never would have thought about heritage like that, but I see it now. These kinds of drawings feel essential precisely because they’re wrestling with the inexpressible. I love when an artwork refuses to give me easy answers. Curator: Me too. Perhaps the answers lie within ourselves, not necessarily the piece itself. Thank you for that perspective.