TRANSpaintings (recurrence)

Mehretu’s new series of ‘TRANSpaintings’ constitutes paintings on semi translucent polyester mesh, a material typically used in the process of silk screen printing. Taking images from current affairs media sources, and in particular from coverage of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Mehretu translates the material to arrive at her own distinctive form of abstraction. These found images are digitally blurred and altered, and then airbrushed onto the surface, a process that Mehretu calls ‘melting’ the image. To this base layer, she adds and erases using screen printing, ink and acrylic paint. With the ‘TRANSpaintings’, Mehretu applies paint to both sides of the mesh, although each work has a distinct recto and verso. For many of the ‘TRANSpaintings,’ base images from the ongoing war in Ukraine are used, which Mehretu translates to arrive at her own distinctive form of abstraction. 

Now in its second year (at the time of writing), the Russian war against Ukraine began after a full scale invasion on 24 February 2022, upon which urban centres across the country including Kyiv and Kharkiv have been bombarded by shelling and missile strikes. More than 8 million refugees have fled the country, and around a third of the country is displaced, which has caused the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the second world war. Mehretu considered these events when titling her exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey ‘They departed for their own country another way’, drawn from the biblical verse Matthew 2:12. 

Arranged ‘in the round’, the ‘TRANSpaintings’ are installed on aluminium frames and scaffolds. These architectural support structures, created by Nairy Baghramian and one aspect of the artists active discourse, serve a multifaceted purpose; clamping and bracing the paintings to stand upright, they lend agency to the artwork’s presence within the space while their placement at differing heights compels a direct encounter with the viewer. 

Additionally, the use of translucent material creates lustrous, ethereal images that permit light to pass through the surface and movement in the space to activate it. Infiltrating the works’ nebulous forms, they become a synthesis of image, action and space that further complicates the viewer’s relationship to – and entanglement with – the abject image. Adding to their haunting luminosity are subtitles with rich referentiality: ‘skull’, ‘hand’, ‘crutch’ and ‘mask’ call the body to mind, whereas an ‘oneiromancer’ is a person who interprets dreams in order to foretell the future (in Greek mythology, dreams were sometimes personified as the deity Oneiros). ‘TRANSpaintings (recurrence)’ suggests the notion of temporality or cyclicality.