Life of forms, Vesna Krmelj

Life of forms

The pictures, dance and performances of Martina Fukuhara Štirn arise in me the question again: Till where can the picture reach? When I asked this question as a student of the history of art exactly twenty years ago, it was meant evocative. Today I understand it mainly retrospective, but not in the sense of nostalgia or historicizing, but as a working title of studying painting and in particular of artists, who understand their work and create not only as a personal promotion and a means to gain power, but as a responsible action.

Theorists point out the loss of the world behind the picture, while the complete domination of the new technologies, which have adopted the effectiveness of the painting. So, the fluidity between the image and the world, between the person and the offense are even more important. When the visual language speaks through the form, substance, relationships, composition and colours, it is extremely accurate. It is never miss the essence. Perhaps that is why the visual language is now so unpopular, accompanied by resistance and fear of difference, which is not dictated and advertised, which is not shocking, with the simplicity that is not banal. The contemporary paint is the body beside painter presence, the body, with which she meditates, making-sense, even healing... Artistic creation is rising again in a relation to the nature with its laws and cyclical rhythm.  Only then it can become a mimesis in the original sense, which celebrates the life forms and the power of creation itself.

Since the modernist painting experienced almost everything: from collage with various objects and substances, to spraying, pouring, cutting and piercing,  we could come to the expression of the ethical aspects of the painter's vision with the big social-politics changes in the eighties again. We have slowly returned the sensitivity, although it is not easy to be identified it in modern imagology. The substance of painting membrane, which can mean only in the relation of individual to the nature, and demonstrates that it is still possible (and necessary) to connect the mood of the picture with the spiritual state of nature, what they have already discovered the Impressionists at the beginning of the 20th century.

“... what feminism set into motion, when it urged attention to neglected voices in the arts was an embrace of limitless possibility rather than of any kind of dogma.” In the above thought from Linda Nochlin, she is telling about the width, which was opened by the women artists in experience of art, and also it exposes the significant difference between the option and the dogma. From the point of view of open options, which are created in a certain time and space by the art, it will be necessary to re-look at the time of the nineties in past century. When the key patterns spread out in philosophy and art, the possibility how the substance transformed and set in many new features and capabilities of the space.

In an interview of a sculptor Duba Sambolec in Art Words, he described an interesting anecdote from early seventies, when she studied sculpturing in Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She made a dynamic woman figure from the coloured plaster titled Women’s coming, which she was hung from the ceiling as the regular end year exhibition in the studio. Professor Drago Tršar immediately withdrew the figure (I think that he did more instinctive than to really consider about it), but the author has installed it back before the tour of professors come. Indeed, the sculptor's studios increasingly premises of women sculptors s, who are interested in contact with the material: clay, wax, paper, work with their hands, with material wellbeing memories ... Professor might not realize, but surely suspect that the future of these spaces are rather feminine, more open, with social awareness, ecological, and even regardless of the gender of the creators.

"If we want to dream deeply, we must dream with the substances" Gaston Bachelard

In the fourth year of study of psychology Martina passed the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts and studied painting in the studio of Gustav Gnamuš, who has worked intensively with Zen influences on European painting, especially with the issues of emptiness. Her thesis is completed with the painter Emerik Bernard, who is virtually implicated the nature and genius loci of his image, and in postgraduate studies she completed with a painter Metka Kraševec, who is painting contemporary icons.

After finishing studies she has been repeatedly moved. She rented the studio in Ljubljana, Most na Soči, Izola and Piran. Each move has changed her life context: things that she has dealt with, people with whom she has encountered. Each new space is also opened to her the other perspectives of the past, family, friendship. The painting (such as Where, I'm waiting) has the presence of the body, spiritual, psychological and mental aspects. A genius locus in the picture is not essential. The focus is the inner space of the body and the sensitivity of the body of the whole, of the harmony of forces, capability of balancing the basic elements and opening the chakras. Figure (or its absence implied the presence of it) overcomes the existential loneliness, when she is seen the nature again. Nature then becomes an enlarged picture frame; all that what happens in it, it is part of the image. In 1999 she created watercolour cycle of infants, who came into the world prematurely. These are fragile, intimate pictures of life that beats and fights, is looking for and found. Martina's cycle from the first days of life on earth, exhibited only once in the Old School in Komen.

How often it happens to a very sensitive viewer, that the very early work is the key issue to the image, viewed by the inner eye of painter, which bears the memory cells of her hand. Or it will be eventually danced by her body once? Sometimes this can happen later on, when the great personal or historical shift turns the tectonic plates of consciousness and behind them the essence of the internal light turns on, like it happened in a painter Zoran Mušič. Sometimes these tectonic plates are so intimate, that it is difficult to recognize them. Especially, if it is occur at a young age of artist, a far ahead of his or her time. Today, the theory does not favour such thinking, because it is dominated by the philosophy in the art, which set up the mental trap on every turn of spiral, experienced in the creative process of every artist. The glow of creations was a bit faded under the sharpness of the twentieth century, but a key-light of truth is never extinguished.

In 1999 she created the image Thrust. Full-figured self-portrait presents a dancer who is turning her back to the viewer. A rich, independent figure invites the viewer to follow the playful, lively step in space of the painting. Although the space is slightly indicated, the haptic materiality of figure and indeterminate background are creating a strong contrast that makes experienced viewer set the inevitable question: where? It is not escape. It is simply leaving this scene and the desire to discover new, maybe very different dimensions of space. Despite the sovereignty of a girl, who has just left our scene, we must stay here and trust that she knows where she goes.

Early works, with which Martina was completed her study of the painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, are rich with intimate poetics. They are cheerful, quick painted images inspired by colour glows and transitions between different spatial plans. The colours are bright, the spectrum is infinitum wide. The white suit that shines from the middle of the picture is innocent, with which she managed to break free from the academic ring to be intact, clean and yet like she is. Despite many temptations to assume a form that was at hand, she chose a longer, her own way. Her body in a vigorous movement is turning away from the viewer, shows him the back, and did half the jump already in the middle of her turning, caught in a moment, when the boundary between front and back is no longer visible.  This figure predicts a creative way, which also follows from this image, and she can keep coming back for inspiration, confidence, following dreams ... in it. So, the figure as the bearer of the image is more and more interesting. Later, it is sometimes completely absent; on the canvas stay only traces, which remain of its presence; dance shoes, white dress, loose hair...

What was announced by the skirt of tulle La Petite Danseuse, a bronze figure of Edvard Degas, which was surprised by the presence of "fugace" goods, different in textures and materials?  It is closer to the dream as to the materiality of the sculpture. Is it calling the viewer to another angle of view? Substance for daydream about motionless body, a cloud of expectations in young ballerina, enchanted eye of the sculptor, who was able to capture material desires, deeply enshrined in the cells of this small, for the movement breathing body.

Matter and motion, material wellbeing touches and imaginative impulses of the body, dreams.

Your life is an art, which you are evolving on the steep slopes of the world's landscapes.

In 2004, Martina moved to Prague, where she was a guest in the conceptual studio of prof. Miloš Šejn at the Academy of Fine Arts until 2006. Šejn encouraged her to focus on drawing, which helped to clean her concept. Around the image she was leaving a lot of space; the drawing was leaking from the format, the whiteness around it, a lot of whiteness.

 In the studio in Prague, she has almost given up the colours and focused only on a line. Rather than colour she used the canvas rolls for the first time - over 10 meters long and very thick strips tightly woven called "mill canvas", which she was processed with ashes and pigments  to alleviate the grid weave, to domesticated it - later in Ljubljana, Japan, Škofja loka … Long rolls are opened up many possibilities of the imagination. They are being developed as a dream in the endless landscape of imagination and under the strong impression of Bachelard’s books, which she was reading in Czech. The rolls become a material base of four elements: water, soil, air and fire.

In the studio of Miloš Šejn she met at the first time a movement called “Bisoku” and Japanese Butoh dance, which was invited to the studio by the professor’s wish, and led by a Korean-Japanese artist Ryuzo Fukuhra, a dancer of the third generation of this avant-garde dance, which was developed after the Second World War in Japan.

Butoh dancer is opened for the characteristics of the space and the particular circumstances of specific situations in every moment, in which she dances. Response, adaptation and building upon the viewer's point of view are the part of the choreography. In my view particularly what excel in the dance of Fukuhara is his full physical and emotional commitment to the movement and beside he has a gift of innate non pathos like the whole body would deliver the emotion, but it would not have fascinated the body, which can address and conquer both the space and the fellow dancers.

One year later, 2007, Martina and Ryuzo moved to Ljubljana, followed by a number of dance workshops and performances in some selected areas. The first contact the artists created, in which the art form was the most universal and also very personal, was in the space of architecture of Jožef Plečnik. The Intimate parallels - between human existence and the rhythm of architecture - were a three-year project, which began with a Butoh workshop and then developed in more than twenty-five locations inside of the architecture of Jožef Plečnik. The choreographies for one to five dancers were remarkable tribute to the master and also the inspiration for the present. Dancing began in the Plecnik's places for his work and personal life and cultural life of the society, on the vertical axis from the north to the south of Ljubljana: his garden house near the centre, continued to before and in National University Library, in the Cobblers' Bridge, on the bank of Gradaščica river, the park Zvezda, at the Three Bridges ... In next year it had been continued in and around the religious buildings, which were created within the religion and the death: on Plečnik's Žale, the Church of Francis in Šiška, on Barje at St. Michael. In the third year 2009, performances were inspired by Plečnik spaces created for the establishment and strengthening of the vital energy of life in Ljubljana at the East-West line: starting at the issue of water and the internal energy inspiratory line at the Tivoli Castle, tracing its descent to the Triple Bridge with the Market and completion of the dance through the wrapping exhale of a hill with Ljubljana Castle on Šance.

Flexible Painting

In some places for example in National University Library, Ryuzo danced with the female dancers and a didgeridoo player and a singer. The dancers were sliding down on the stairs, most of the time upside down like falling giants. On the other performances even other dancers were joining, among them Martina, who was at this time finishing her master, and painted the canvas on which the dance is not only figural motif, but the movement itself becomes part of the picture. In the history of Western-European painting the action painting is the closest to this eastern principle, which was also drawn from the eastern philosophy and Zen. Uncontrolled leaking of traces on the canvas, which follows to process of gestures and acts of creativity, are presented in a special way also in Martina’s painting. Their emphases are not so much in the unconscious trace of the brush, as in empathy.  It is like the graphs of the movements would appear on the canvas. Even more, the whole atmosphere of the dancer is totally immersed in paint.

Architecture and the space are constitutive parts of dance’s image, which has no pre-made patterns and forms, but adapts to the place, audience, current conditions and to the sounds ... Dancer is listening all these and to keep tune with the surrounding. She is practically inseparable with the movement of grass, wind, and with the ground configuration, density, colours and sound of voices. She painted the images of the four elements on a canvas and linked two canvases together into a single item, so that each picture has its front and back. The way they were related is dependent on the elements: fire, for example, opens like the outside cover of the book, but the water was painted on the inside and run out.

"Double side images, freely hanged in the space, invite eyes and body weaving. With this, how they are placed into the space, they are already talking about the transition of the elements. They are making a larger whole, to peel the middle of them and not the end point of view. In other words: the essence of the artwork is in itself, but we can find it also more clearly in the empty space around. Like in dance, when the motion is in the space, the drawings are delineating. A dense intimate substance is giving the growth of an image and dance, but not the beginning nor end, but the middle of the soul ", Martina wrote in her thesis.  

Butoh is not only a dance; it is also the image that she painted on canvas. Although her features on the canvases appear much faster, more temperamental, it should not be overlooked that they are the time cocoons made by the invisible threads, which are like visible signs of the movement in a space. In some parts the cocoons are thicker, and in another they are almost disappearing; these lines are not the plans separated from the body, but with them it is also not possible to repeat the whole choreography. They are like the cocoons of the body’s memory, of every stimulus that participating in the events. Like the eyes that see and are seen at the same time, also every movement has its own impulse, and a certain attitude that keeps the movement in a given situation. Like stroke causes a certain posture to establish the motive.

"Lovely eye of violet sees blue sky, until the colour becomes similar to what she sees."  Percy Bysshe Shelley (after Gaston Bachelard from the book Water and Dreams)

Movement and substance are in equilibrium with the dancer, who thinks and dreams through the materials and through the body. Painting, which is till then tied to a image, after that  intervened even deeper, to the very substance of earth pigments, canvas, linen colours, the shape of petals and stems, paper, fibres treated melted in water and dried in air, seasoned ash in the fire ...

Martina’s rolls from "milling canvas" are - like how she is processed them- got a name Water, Earth, Air and Fire. With them she is dancing, painting, dreaming, design plans and sleeping over them, while they are waiting in small Škofja Loka studio apartment for the new ritual. They also encouraged the emergence of double side images Touches of the stream, where the endless imagination develops from fabric of the one side to the other side, and on a new canvas. There is a colour melody, which is creating from apparent chaos. As Martina said: “It is a picture, the dance of fictional and the reality of everyday life of me, animals, plants, wind... “

Action painting with acrylics was left far behind, even a bit of similarity between them no longer.

Thin thread of Navel

When I’m talking about the dance performances of Martina and Ryuzo, I’m always thinking about the nature of these performances, which are, at least for Martina, closer to performance art, or as she calls it a ritual. This certainly applies to one of their latest, for the dance game Thin Thread of Navel, which is inspired by pregnancy and childbirth. During the ritual, which consists of a series of seven sequences, dancers exchange their role: from conception, when Ryuzo is pregnant first, and Martina is tabula rasa, to the third month, when Martina bears a child; and to enjoying plenty of space in the belly like two twins, and the next sequences, when they explore the border of the space. Then the childbirth is following, at first Martina is delivering with the fact that Ryuzo is her doula, then next moment vice versa: the doula is Martina.  Ritual ends by Martina’s dancing as a baby and Ryuzo is dancing as the placenta. The stage is the floor, sometimes covered with "mill canvas" in a circular form, or wrapped in a laces spiral made by Balkan women.

Martina, who besides the study of painting finished the study of psychology at the Philosophical Faculty, has been also a doula since 2005. Doula is a giving birth companion, who is helping in births. Her sense is to return the giving birth into the hands of the couple, which are expecting the child, and to encourage and to allow the natural origins of life. Birth is the title of the puppet show for children, with which Martina has been touring in kindergartens and schools. The dolls are soft and warm, made from natural materials and very simple, do not mimic the human body, but leave the imagination completely free. The performance shows the relationship between the partners before, during and after the childbirth, and shows the strength of the body, which knows what is going on with her or him and what she or he should do. Also it shows the power of desire and joy, when a new human is born on the earth. Children talk with Martina before and after the show, draw and dance their birth, as they can express it.

The beginning of life and perhaps the birth of every human is triggered by strong emotions, so one of the teachers advised to Martina that first of all she should play the puppet with teachers, because it is much harder for adults than for children to accept and to come back to that state of complete helplessness, timeless and feelings of all-encompassing bliss. Certainly that's why Martina is still painting. Picture is a membrane, to which we always are coming back, when we are looking for the contact with some long time buried feeling, for colour with bliss of childhood, caught in the curve. Picture is the view that may awake the emotion and revive the memory of the smell of the air and the colour of the birds singing, the music of the first breath. Till where can the picture reach?

Vesna Krmelj

Martin Fukuhara Štirn is Ma. Arts, Psychology, doula, dancer, painter, puppet player – free artist in Slovenia. This year involved in the Etnohisteria Gračišče, Seoul and Busan International Improvisation Dance Festival,  1 World Doula week in Ljubljana,  Dance festival “Dance Box” in Paris, at Linea D'Aqua Trst. In the years before: the Festival of Cinema Island in Izola, at the XVII. Milko Kelemen days in Slatina, in the Small Gallery Kranj, the Hotel Limbo Gambettola, at the 14th Ive Šubic colony in Poljane, Pleskavica Festival in Ljubljana, the Praetorian Palace in Koper, on MandalaPerformance Art Festival in Wroclaw, in the 4th Beijing Biennale, at the Arsenale della Danza La Biennale di Venezia, Mozg Festival Bydgosc, Art Stays 2009 in Ptuj, the Festival of poets Poznan, Performa Festival Maribor, Ljubljana Festival Red Dawn, The Gallery Media Nox Maribor, Wakayama Arts and Culture Support Society, Kresija Gallery in Ljubljana, the festival Break 2.4 Ljubljana, the 11th Masdanza international festival of contemporary dance in the Canary Islands, in Gallery Kresija, Gallery Beižgrad 2 ,Gallery Srečišče in Ljubljana, Ballinglen The Arts Foundation, Ballycastle Gallery, Gallery Alcatraz in Ljubljana, the Old School Gallery Komen.

031 690 163, martinastirn@gmail.com, http://martinastirn.blogspot.com/, http://www.geocities.jp/martina_stirn/,

Intimate parallels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFeNFzcV9L0,

Thread of Navel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZw9Kc9VH7k,

Birth http://vimeo.com/32110965

Support to Touches of the stream: Ryuzo Fukuhara, Zavod Federacija Ljubljana, Združenje Sezam Ljubljana, KUD Sestava Ljubljana, Zavod Cornucopia Ljubljana, Induplati Jarše, Tosama Domžale, Alojz Štirn, Ministry for education, science, culture and sport Rebpublic Slovenia

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