Sarah Księska

Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Artist statement

We live in a world where many forms of belief have lost their certainty, yet the need for meaning remains. Growing up in the aftermath of post-socialism, where political and religious systems once presented themselves as timelessly complete, I feel this need as a longing not for a new doctrine but for something felt rather than understood, something no system can fully account for. My paintings begin by contemplating ordinary things. I paint familiar bodies, faces, objects, and spaces when they strike me as strangely distant. A figure or an object starts to feel like more than itself. Figures are often partly hidden or incomplete, shaped by the spaces around them. Inside and outside merge or exchange places; a body can appear porous and exposed, an object can seem alive. Beauty and discomfort coexist. I build the paintings slowly, in thin layers of oil on aluminum over various grounds. These grounds are not neutral: some absorb the paint, while others resist or reflect it, and forms develop through this friction. The instability of the image is an integral part of the physical process of painting. A face or body may be recognizable without ever becoming completely clear. The paintings are not riddles or cryptic messages. I want to see something that cannot be explained, something touchable but not graspable, knowable but incommunicable. Painting carries a form of enchantment for me because the process, like the material, never settles into something definite. I paint...

Artwork