SETZKASTEN

Setzkasten

A Setzkasten is a small cabinet hung on the wall — a grid of compartments, each one waiting to hold something chosen. A shell. A figurine. A spool of thread. You decide what goes in, and once it is placed, you know immediately whether it belongs or whether something has to go.

The decision is the work.

These paintings were heavily overworked. Layer over layer, form buried under form, colour painted out and painted over until something began to emerge. What looks like stillness on the surface is the result of a long process of removal — of asking, again and again, what do I keep and what has to go. What you see is what was kept.

But memory is not always quiet. Sometimes it surfaces with colour and pressure, insisting on attention. Some of these paintings hold their contents calmly — things settled in their compartments, the tray at rest. Others feel the contents pushing back, the structure straining against what it contains. Both are true to how memory works: sometimes archived, sometimes activated.

This is not collage or arrangement. It is closer to excavation — starting from too much and working toward what can stay. The compartments survived. They are what remained after everything unnecessary was taken away.

The quietness in some of these works is not emptiness. It is the quietness of a decision made. The tension in others is not chaos. It is the weight of what was worth keeping.