Painting #9 (Persona)

Paintings is an ongoing project at the intersection of painting, film, and performance. White paint is applied in slow, deliberate gestures, and the cinematic image emerges, evoking a dialogue between analogue and digital forms. Through the act of painting, cinematic sequences become both carriers and triggers of memory. Painting #9 (Persona) shows a moment from the opening of Persona by Ingmar Bergman (1966): a boy waking on a stretcher, opening a book, and reaching toward the blurred, oversized faces of the protagonists.

How do I remember a film?
Which images linger? Where does seeing happen— in the eyes, the mind? And how can the fleeting, the act of remembering and forgetting, be made visible? In Painting #9 (Persona), a film sequence takes shape on a glass surface. The transparent pane becomes a projection field for recollection—a place where painting, film, and perception intertwine. What first appears minimal reveals complex layers upon closer inspection. Remembering becomes an active, embodied process; the painted gestures bring memories to the surface, only to let them fade again.

Painting #9” (Persona) was shortlisted for the Media Art Prize SEHNERV 2020.

Installation view, Regionale 22, «… von möglichen Welten», Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel