My challenge as a painter is to depict bodily human condition reality, which primarily defines us as mammals. I seek to celebrate the body and instinct with the intention to pursue human essence, which we deny so much in the present. Basic instinct can´t be suppressed but we are constantly educated in the modern artificial ways and this results collaterally in trying to do so.
What makes us human in the first place is our animal need to come in contact with our own spirit.
Visually, this concept translates into portraying human physicality via tangible and organic flesh, in contrast with the abstract contemporary human life, illustrated by the dissolution and rupture of the body. I work with the violence present in the natural physical contact of our behavior, the violence of bodies entangled in a vital fight and also the suicidal violence of our present disfiguration of nature.
http://josemichelsen.com
