Anna Huxel

Exposé

Theoretical Background and Painting

The foundation of my thinking is the biblical understanding that man is separated into mind, body and soul, creating a whole human being as these parts interact with each other. The mind is always in connection to God, an objectivity infusing the real world. The soul on the other hand corresponds with our reality, as it is shaped by what happened in our past. Rudolf Dreikurs says in his book “Grundbegriffe der Individualpsychologie nach Alfred Adler” that a child jumps to conclusions itself and thereby chooses a certain lifestyle guaranteeing him or her a safe spot in society. These decisions that are made subconsciously thereby have a certain motivation. If this subconsciously created finality emerges in the consciousness, it becomes irreversible. This makes it possible to set new goals which are oriented on an equal way of belonging in society. These new found convictions then influence our internal perception and thereby cause a new and different interpretation of reality. The body then is a physical substance that is concrete and changes. It visualises the other two immaterial aspects. In this context, Sanders4 questions: How realistic was Paulus’ belief in a transformation in the present? These questions are highly demanding because they try to analyse someone’s way of thinking that is from another time period. Nowadays, we strongly separate the body from anything spiritual. This border is almost understood as a natural order. It is either the body that changes, which we can see with our own eyes, or our way of thinking, our goals in life, change. Change is thereby either psychological or physiological.
The question now would be in how far this affects my work and how I translate them into art.
My paintings implicate a juxtaposition of my inner reality with an objective reality on the outside. In this process, I engage with texts from the Bible, which then create an image that I as an artist am trying to express in my own way of painting. The different aspects thereby come together, and a new layer is created that separates itself from the biblical starting point. My interior reality blends with the biblical elements, and the paintings become autonomous. As a good example, look at the painting “Webmeister” painted in 2016.
I started my process with the incarnation of the godly word into flesh, which is expressed in the painting by adding fluorescent pigments to the fleshy colours. A book functions as the background as a symbol for words and language. This book is then “overcoloured” by the aforementioned fluorescent-flesh-colours. During the process of painting the content, I was expressing changed: The outside represented in the digital world incarnates into the flesh and the biblical motive thereby makes a connection to our present. As this process shows, I am not creating paintings showing biblical scenes, but they are part of the process of creating my painting. ! 4 Paulus, Eine Einführung, E.P.Sanders, Reclam S.93
The central question of my work is: “How does word turn into flesh?” In John 1,14 it says: “And so the Word became flesh and took a place among us for a time; and we saw his glory-- such glory as is given to an only son by his father--saw it to be true and full of grace.“ This scene describes the incarnation of Jesus. In John 17,22 Jesus prays for his disciples: “And the glory which you have given to me I have given to them, so that they may be one even as we are one.” How does this incarnation work? I want to find out what happens during this process.
This “unification” is impossible to grasp in a theoretical discourse, which is why I am aiming for an examination in the form of painting. While painting, an organic transformation takes place, which arises from the juxtaposition of the psychological and a divine reality. By visualising the subconscious in the context of painting, mercy can be incarnated into the soul, resulting in the formation of an identity, coming into unison with the original identity, which is now not solely coined by a psychological-interior reality. This transformation then has to happen on the level of painting.
I would like to argue that my art tries to look for proof of the existence of God, but this is where belief has its limits because belief withdraws itself from our reason. Paul’s letters offer a solution that I would like to come close to by secondary literature. Paulus discourse in Romans 7,15 about the discussion of mind and body comes to the following conclusion: “And I have no clear knowledge of what I am doing, for that which I have a mind to do, I do not, but what I have hate for, that I do.” This gap shows that the “unification” does not solely derive from reason. Through painting, this cognitive process shall be abstracted and thereby reveal this given relation.