Events/Openings

SOCIETAL CRUCIFIXION

Not a Portrait.

‘Social upbringing’ consists of aspects carried out by the community of and throughout a person‘s development of life in order to shape as well as influence one’s identity; a way of living life. Winston Torr became fascinated with newspapers because to him they symbolize what society wants a person to say, read, believe, do, and act. Their surface condenses the current society’s data. When street artists use the urban surface to express themselves, Torr uses another social surface, newspapers, that he turns by a whole mummification process into something organic. It becomes a raw material he paints on; it is a new soil coming from a compost, from which the artist extracts individuals. They are not just added on the canvas; it is a whole excavation process. There is a search for preciseness. The depicted human beings are nude, mainly figures of society’s standard stripped of all external barriers. Their contours are represented in 2D with the accuracy of a sculptor. Torr’s starting point is a well-developed world and society whose content he remodels to make human beings appear precisely, free from all social information and influence, rather than model human beings from the texture of a virgin world. It is a reversed genesis. Winston Torr comments on ‘social upbringing’ in his series reflecting behavior patterns emanating from SOCIETAL CRUCIFIXION.

Curated by Florence Reidenbach