HELGA KOS

Feeding the memory

In a way one could say that my paintings are a reflection of reality, that is, they are sediment of the experience of this reality. I'd like to give an explanation of my work in the light of the following proposition: 'There is no more exact reproduction of reality than that of a photo.' At first glance this seems incontrovertible. The lens, like a window to the world, registers all that falls with in its range. Yet a photo seldom really resembles the object that was in front of the lens. Often enough a photographic portrait does not at all portray the person involved. The reason for this is that one is not able to see all there is to see, in 1/125th of a second. Man never sees reality as a fraction of time. Man doesn't experience reality like a camera does: as a fraction of time like a photograph. For instance: Now I see a boy with his hand for his mouth, but I saw his mouth just before. I 'know' his mouth; I see his mouth even though it is not visible. Memory is not made up of pieces of time, but of very complicated groups of images. When I reflect on something, all these images come back to me at once. A memory of "reality" is a very complex compilation of many images of that moment. And it appears in a setting additional to previous memories of comparable situations.

For me, photographical images and films have confused us very much in our consciousness of reality. Photographs and films have become a new reality by themselves, a reality which is seemingly easy to be put in the place of "true" reality. Even though reality is never to be experienced without our interpretation of it, it is important to try to understand that process and not to mistake the depicted reality for the real thing. In my paintings I try to reveal our way of looking at reality and to find a way to depict memories, closer to the real process of remembering than photographs can ever get.

H. KOS, January 1998