Dunno

IMG: rt4a, Dunno, 2022, acrylic, gouache and pencil on linen canvas, 42.5 × 42.5 × 5 cm
Dunno

2022
Acrylic, gouache and pencil on linen canvas
42.5 × 42.5 × 5 cm
RT4A2206
Courtesy of the artist

Dunno began as an attempt to join two things: a sentence painted in the manner of Rémy Zaugg, in the Univers 85 he used, a typeface by Adrian Frutiger, and a self-portrait memoji. The sentence seemed too dramatic and out of place, so I erased it. Erased and invisible, it still made sense: it pointed back to Zaugg, and to Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953.

The erasure left only the image: the memoji, drawn on a dark ground. Shrugging, it takes its colours from the standard emojis: only the eyes are fully painted; the skin, the body and the clothes are outlined in coloured pencil. The title says what the shrug says.

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