FLUTTERING THE VOID

What is a void? And to what extent is the absence of something related to the presence of everything? In her writing, theorist Karen Barad uses a slash to emphasize that even boundaries are a part of the whole non/existence. To what extent do they belong together, and to what extent does the butterfly fluttering in front of the flower define itself? Like Barad, who uses quantum field theory to deconstruct identities, in his paintings Kristian Touborg blurs the boundaries of people, technology, and nature. With extraordinary sensitivity, he records ordinary objects with his camera and then prints situations onto canvas by hand or digitally. They are framed by remarkable atmospheres, shimmering and interwoven with light. He constructs paintings like statues that rebel against the frame, with colors that make it seem as if the matter itself is speaking through the painting, that it wants to be discovered, that desires to be in touch. Just as philosophy since Maurice Merleau-Ponty has shifted from human perception to a search for a more encompassing, non-human perspective, the challenge of contemporary abstract art is to move beyond Kandinsky’s atomization of the pictorial surface and to find abstraction in real motifs. Kristian Touborg’s paintings speak to me in this unstylized, radical openness, without using LSD, psilocybin, or other shortcuts. The beautiful and at the same time threatening cacophony of interacting, self-defining, shimmering matter relates to us, touches us, and speaks to us about the infinity of other beings. The matter in them is in a loving embrace with reality—a pregnant union.