Saturday, February 6, 2010

Energy of Pink, unplugged


Energy of Pink, unplugged - was an exhibition in Ruhrgebiet in 2009, where the German painter Claudia Schmidt shared a bit of her ever-crossing connections between Butoh and Visual Arts. She considers her paintings as extreemly fragile shapes - keeping them together only by energy. This is the point of contact between her dance and her Butoh paintings, this is the agreement.
I had the chance to dance with Claudia in the last Tadashi Endo's workshop in Gottingen (jan 2010), and had access to her work - which made me think about how Butoh is everywhere and definitely not determined to a mean of art, basically because Butoh is, above all, an attitude. I see no harm in appropriating culturally Butoh for visual arts, theatre, films etc, actually this is very interesting in my oppinion. I hope along this year to be able to develop a substantial thesis, part of my MA, and understand more how cultural borrowing or appropriation becomes part of an identity of an artist. Why is Butoh so vunerable? and influencial?
Anyway, feel free to go through Claudia Schmidt's work here and please visit her personal website and her manager's website in Frankfurt.
The first painting is called "Durchlass - Form" #8(Let through-Shape), 2010
50 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas. This second picture is from her studio, there you can feel the exact proportions of the paintings, usually large, and of course you can imagine that it requires a total commitment of the whole body when painting them. Colours and shapes are indeed performative, for Claudia: energy. If she paints with the same viceral movements that she dances... I would love to experience seeing her painting... Can you identify Butoh in them? Check how independend white, black, blue and pink behave - for me, these powerful shades remind me of some of my dreams when the world looks blured and I can dance with the shapes making everything that has vertices get round and irregular. I guess this is what both Claudia and I want, in a dream, in a dance, in a painting, in life.

4 comments:

annie luis said...

DAVID!!!

I love your blog! Keep them coming, okay? Not only do I get an informal education on Butoh, I also get to keep track of you. ;-) I was wondering the other day of what has been happening on your side of the universe. I see that everything seems to be falling into place. You are moving, flying, flowing, floating, celebrating freedom! Wow! Keep it up! As Cheche once said, you are truly celebrating life! I miss you! Mmmmmmwahs!

Jânio Soul said...

que experiência linda...ah! e o blog tah lindo tbm
bjo

Jânio Soul said...

Que experiência linda... ah e o blog tah lindo
Bjo

leela said...

Thank you for your blog offerings of your butoh experiences. I am moved to read other's words who share the journey of butoh - moving and inspiring...

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