Floating Flames 12

The work unfolds as a gathering beneath an expansive, almost protective canopy of leaves. Four elongated figures stand closely together, their bodies rendered through fluid black lines while their faces remain deliberately unresolved. Rather than individual portraits, they appear as archetypes—figures of community, memory and shared human experience. Their gestures suggest an exchange: hands meet, objects are held, and bodies subtly turn toward one another, creating the sense of a quiet ritual or communal encounter. The surrounding vegetation rises above them with an exaggerated scale, transforming the scene into something both earthly and symbolic—a space of shelter, fertility and belonging. The burned and cut paper is integral to the work’s meaning. Absence becomes part of the composition: openings interrupt bodies and landscape, allowing the space behind the work to enter the image itself. What has been removed becomes as present as what remains. The fragile, scorched edges heighten this tension between presence and disappearance, permanence and vulnerability. Suspended within the frame without a backing, the work acquires an almost sculptural quality. Light passes through its openings and casts shifting shadows behind the figures, extending the drawing beyond the paper. The gathering therefore exists somewhere between image, object and memory—a scene held together by human connection, yet literally shaped by absence.