BIOGRAPHY

Alina Shapiro (Chilikin)

STATEMENT

Before I approach a canvas, I picture myself as something or somebody else; I try on whatever role strikes me at that moment, whether it is a character in a book, a chord, or a camera. In other words, I start imagining. This state's appeal to me is its dual nature: unlike mere daydreams that play out on illusory prop room stages, imagination implies the absence of set pieces, an open platform, natural lighting, and sounds from without. In other words, imagination does not exclude real space, but uses it; it does not isolate from irritating sounds, but masters and incorporates them into the background music that is the emotional foundation of the image in formation. Such are a painting's first sparks.

Each new image gradually expands my created space like colored pebbles elaborating a mosaic. This is the source of certain fragmentariness in my work, which isn't a hymn to destruction, but a mark of deliberation in the search for the next element in my mosaic. When an element takes on a form, I discover something previously unseen-my conception, once clear and predetermined, suddenly becomes unrecognizable, asking me new questions and setting me to new tasks. This process has no fixed end. It never leads to a declaration, the style and brushstrokes aren't the substance of the paintings; it is purely the search for the poetic image.

This can be seen in Psyche. Psyche isn't a woman after all, but the soul itself. In feeling, she desires, first and foremost, to see. This is why there is a lamp and an oil burn on Eros' body. In Anatole France's "The Garden of Epicurus," there is a somewhat playful discussion of how in the last stage of metamorphosis, certain insects do not have stomachs, but only wings "and in this purified form, these creatures emerge for an hour of love, and then die." It is this kind of creature that the author compares to humans. The metamorphosis from sullen mummy to winged butterfly is its own kind of palimpsest that stresses the past and present as genesis of the future.

Adapting the words of Edmond Jabes, I believe in the predestination of the artist. He receives it from the image, which carries its suffering and its hope within it. He questions the images, which question him. He accompanies the images, which accompany him. The initiative is shared, as if spontaneous. Being useful to them (in using them) he gives a deep sense to his life and to theirs, from which his own sprung.