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Sebastian Boulter (Finland)
painting (oil on canvas – 72×100, 72×60, 100×72)Art Mix Studio, Yerevan
March 10-16, 2010
It was John Cage, a composer of silence (if I may say so), who inspired me in the first place in this painting process of ‘Composition of Silence’. Obviously his main tool was a sound, but in the other hand he focused deeply into silence as well, and not only in his work, but also in a spiritual matter. I think that silence appears in its most relevant existence by searching the inner silence of our selves. Meditation must be the most preponderant existence of silence and our spiritual wellness is dependent of its condition.
Georges Bataille has written about silence that ‘of all words, it is the most poetic and the most perverse: it is itself the proof of its own death’. As a consequence of this condition, silence is a chameleon-like concept, non-absolute and whose meaning varies radically depending its context.
The furthest extension of reluctance to communicate, as Susan Sontag has expressed silence, varies the phenomenon of silence radically. Reluctance to communicate can cause extremely painful and far-reaching impact. Extreme example of this point of view is the Armenian Genocide and this unsolved fact is carrying its echoes still until our generation.
Sebastian Boulter
Acknowledgements: Department of Fine Arts, Armenian Open University and AJZ Space, Yerevan.