Stephanie Marie Roos: Magic Reality, 2020
This series of life size busts is inspired by a novel of Haruki Murakami “Killing Commendatore”. It is not an illustration of the book. I had been carrying around this idea for a long time – to give Murakami’s books a shape. You can say, he is my literary role model. I am fascinated by his clear narrative style, accuracy, the vividly described figures, always with very precise images of their clothes, and at the same time the surreal and the magical moments. I adore his complexity and freedom in the choice of motifs, the ease with which he writes a story. The novel served as an inspiration to follow the way of the protagonist in the book, who is a portrait painter.
My work during this portrait project was naturally moving more into the direction of being more realistic but being deeply immersed in a portrait means so much more than depicting a person.
In addition to capturing the essence of the represented person, it is always a psychological examination of one’s own person and history. It is a kind of exploration of the foreign and the own … what I cannot see in myself allows the image of the other…
Sometimes arises a fantastic element, that complements the portrait and connects it with another level beyond individuality and symbolizes the general tragedy of existence – transience, error, fear, desires, loneliness….
Some of my models were randomly chosen people because they found the idea exciting or because they didn’t mind being photographed. I asked for photos because something had appealed to me and I wanted to find out what. Some of them are self-portraits. Sometimes, there was the story first, and then the person. But those where the story emerged while working were magical … There were also many moments of struggle, and portraits that simply refused to emerge as it happens in the book, where the painter is not able to continue with one special painting and he is told: “Leave it alone!”
Photo captions:
- Man with a blindfold, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, luster, bees wax, 41 x 54 x 26 cm
- Butterfly man, 2020, Stoneware, engobe, glaze, ceramic decals, 51 x 51 x 29 cm
- Cherry blossom girl, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, underglaze decal, luster, 44 x 47 x 25 cm
- Narcissus, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, ceramic decal, luster, 68 x 48 x 30 cm / Echo, 2020, stoneware, engobe, oxide, glaze, ceramic decal, luster, 65 x 31 x 27cm
- Not see not hear not speak, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, 42 x 45 x 29cm, Gorilla Mask: 12 x 28 x 34cm
- The Man with the White Subaru Forester, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, 43 x 48 x 41cm
- Woman with a Pom Beanie, 2020, stoneware, engobe, glaze, luster, 49 x 56 x 24 cm
