Endurance, 2024
Brunaille technique with enamel pigments on glass, framed
70 x 40 cm
For the collaboration between the University of the Arts Bremen and the Museum Paula Modersohn-Becker, in frame of the exhibition Faszination Höhle (10.02.2024 – 09.06.2023).
The Altamira cave paintings have always fascinated me since I was a kid, specially wanting to be an archeologist and having spending my childhood in Spain, it felt so close yet so far. I knew already then, that one day I’ll work on a project that brings to the surface their existence; to an environment in which many people couldn’t care less.
Life threw me to the artistic path, which thankfully has helped me discover and learn more of what I could ever have imagined. Recently with both painting classes from HfK that collaborated for this project, we watched Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog which brought the fascination I had for history back.
While I had already the Altamira Cave paintings and now the Chauvet Cave paintings documented by Herzog merged in one background, I needed a main element that would bring all what I felt inside of me together. Soon I stumbled upon the personal project Timecave by Beatriz Flamini, athlete and mountaineer from Spain. A project in which, she isolated herself in a 70 metres deep cave near Montril, Granada, for 500 days without human interaction. Nothing resonated with me more than willingly distancing yourself from society, to be left to draw, read and lose your sanity in peace.
Why on glass? None of the mediums I work with, get closer to what lingering inside a cave as a human being means than glass. Fragile, transcendental, perilous and humbling. The raw materials that compose glass surround you and the extreme temperatures and pressure cripple on you every passing second.
Thank you Beatriz Flamini for allowing me to paint you. Thank you Luis Bruna for helping me with this piece and thank you Museen Böttcherstraße for the opportunity to show our works.
All pictures taken and text written by Isidora Bruna, 2024.