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My paintings begin with observation but resist representation. I start from things I see—objects, fragments of art history, commodities, and bodily references—but the painted image is never the thing itself. Like the displaced animal in The Other Tiger by Jorge Luis Borges, once an object enters painting it becomes a substitute: a mediated double rather than an original presence.
Because of this distance, subject matter is secondary. What concerns me is how painting inevitably organizes the world. Painting orders, balances, and aestheticizes; it cannot escape
beauty or structure. Even when addressing rupture or violence, it composes them into form. In this sense, beauty is not neutral but disciplinary—it measures, corrects, and regulates bodies and desires.
I juxtapose images of idealized beauty with objects that imply modification and control: classical nudes, carved jade ornaments, cosmetic tools, decorative surfaces. These elements share a quiet, latent violence embedded in the pursuit of perfection. Rather than dramatizing it, I keep it subtle and structural.
Working primarily in oil on linen and velvet, I draw from photographs I take and images found online—shame, secrecy, desire, pain, humor, and personal memory. My paintings often carry a muted, twisted humor that masks an underlying melancholy.
For me, painting functions as an abstract language and a temporary refuge: not to represent the world, but to construct order within it.