I chose to work with bitumen (an asphalt) for several important reasons. It has a unique blackness that changes, when diluted, to a transparent and lively brown. This highly malleable material is well suited for my process-oriented work. It has “self-shaping properties”, a concept introduced by Joseph Beuys when he described his use of fat. Bitumen transforms the pulling movement of a pallet knife into an imprint of the movement in space. This leads me to choose the term "imprint” for some works of this kind.
|