Maja RuznicMutter

Maja Ruznic’s painting makes one aware that one is looking from the outside in and is nonetheless drawn inside, obliged to abide by the mysterious laws that prevail within it. For even if the surface of painting knows no time, at least no linear time – no beginning, no end – it can nevertheless have a rhythm. This is what Ruznic calls the “visual throbbing.” It is the pulse of the painting, its vibration, its movement, the life it leads before our eyes, its very own murmuring. That this happens, that one is moved by what is observed and an intimacy with it develops, is something the psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger calls “wit(h)nessing,” a blending of bearing witness (wit-ness) and being together (with-ness). She emphasises how important it is to be affectively present and to permit an interweaving of observer and observed in a shared experience that ultimately changes both. Ruznic creates this boundless realm in which all colours and all figures overflow and the only boundary is drawn by the edge of the canvas. In this space the creatures merge as if of their own accord with their surroundings, emerge and fade, pass seamlessly into one another, expand to the point of formlessness. Ruznic’s thin layers of paint let these creatures come into being and pass away as though they had their origin in the painting itself, so that to us viewers they seem to be approaching from far away or from times long past.

Exhibition:
Contemporary Fine Arts CFA Berlin, 13/9 – 26/10/2024