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ALTERED FORMS

THE TROUBLE OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

ALTERED FORMS

I am alone in the studio.
Surrounded by paintings that no one wants, I sit with them, these objects I have made, these forms that once had meaning, now hovering in an uneasy limbo. I question my practice. I question my purpose. I doubt myself. I ask, and ask, and ask—but no answers come.
These paintings, these altered forms, once had a life. I made them, and they made sense. But now, they are layered over, erased, buried beneath coats of paint that harden like a shell, or scraped raw until only fragments remain. Some resist, their past still pressing through, ghostlike. Others disappear completely, swallowed by silver, by white, by time. I don't know if they are becoming something new or simply dissolving into obscurity. I don’t know if that even matters.
What happens when something is no longer what it was meant to be? What happens when function is abandoned, when form is pushed to the point of erasure? I used to think objects existed for a reason, that they served a purpose. But here I am, surrounded by things that no longer function as they once did—paintings stripped of their original intent, frames that no longer hold images, questions that lead nowhere.
The works themselves ask instead of answer. Which painting is your favourite? I don’t even know if I have one. What time is it? As if time moves at all in this space. The days blur together, and I am left with only these surfaces, these traces of what once was. Do we all need fairytales to believe? Maybe I do. Maybe I tell myself stories to keep going—to make sense of the silence, the uncertainty, the weight of all these objects I can’t let go of.
Some canvases are thick with layers of white wall paint, built up until the surface cracks, breaking apart under its own weight. Another was covered completely, only to be scraped back down to reveal a single blue sphere, like an echo of something forgotten. Some are coated in silver, reflective but empty, light bouncing off without revealing anything beneath. Three frames are fused together, impossible to separate. Is it finished yet? These pieces are as much about destruction as they are about creation. They are what happens when I push something past its limit—when I try to erase and, in doing so, create something new.
But who are these works for? Are they just for me? I stand in front of them, waiting for meaning to appear, but instead, I just keep questioning. Is this what art is? A process of asking and never answering? A cycle of making and unmaking, of trying to hold onto something only to watch it slip away?
I have stripped these objects of their function, their original intent. And in doing so, I have exposed something else: the fragile, uneasy space between clarity and chaos, between knowing and not knowing. I have taken what was once stable and made it unstable. I have taken meaning and drowned it in layers of paint, hoping something else might emerge from underneath.
It is about waiting for clarity that never comes.
It is about what remains when meaning is stripped away.
It is about everything I do not know.

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© 2024 by Aleksandra Cegielska. All rights reserved.

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