Time is Personal, 2021-2024

The “Time is Personal” series reflects individual vulnerabilities of people in my immediate surroundings. By recreating photos (most taken by me) with pencils on paper (and later oil on canvas) , I let a reality come to life that is forever gone – and let myself feel time beyond time.

Works of this series were exhibited at gallery twenty-six and at [FKc] FORUM KUNST contemporary.

"I grew to realize how much occurs in a moment that lasts only seconds."
"The Present Moment", Daniel N. Stern
After the Storm, 2023 | oil on canvas
140 × 250 cm | 55 × 98 in
Forever, 2022 | pencil on paper
70 × 50 cm
"The nondemanding touch is the essence of true mothering. It is an unconditionally loving touch that says, "I am here for you. I am with you in your sadness, your fear, your grief, your terror, your agony, your pain, your joy. I have no expectations that you need to meet. I love you just as you are, and I am here for you however you choose to be. [...] It is a healing touch."
"Healing Your Aloneness", Erika J. Chopich & Margaret Paul

Beyond Time

My third batch of psychotherapy sessions lasted from 2021-2023, and finally made me understand the unusual relationship I’ve always had with time. Having been ░░░░░░ ░░░░ ░░ ░ ░░░, I could finally give it a name: for me, time didn’t yet begin. Being pre-time meant that life itself hadn’t yet started. I was still in ░░░░ ░░░░ ░░░░░ ░░░ ░░░░, not just ░░░░░░ away from that ░░░░, but from life – and time – itself. And while I was pre-time, I experienced life to already be over.

This finally explained my sense of urgency, of loss, of life-within-no-life. The feeling that my existence, even though lived so fully, nevertheless didn’t feel worthwhile – because it didn’t feel to actually happen, to actually be.

It didn’t feel.

Time never started, but managed to trick me into believing it was already over, an existence both
pre-born and post-deceased.

A lot of my trauma work went into understanding anxiety, anger, grief and sadness. What does transgenerational trauma mean – where does it begin, and how to make it stop? When does one’s life begin, when seen as part of a transgenerational sequence? As Sebern Fisher discusses in “Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma“, there’s a lot that can happen to you before you’re born, in the time when your amygdala is formed, but your birth hasn’t yet happened.

Whatever happens to you, never exists in a vacuum. You are part of a sequence, a continuum – that sometimes needs to be broken.

Gegenlicht (You Are Now), 2021 | pencil on paper
50 × 70 cm
"Children love to sing and dance. They love stories and fairy tales. Stories, singing, dancing, and poetry are true modes of knowing. They are marvelous constituents of human life, of equal importance with logical ways of knowing."
"Creating Love", John Bradshaw
The Great Below, 2023 | oil on canvas
140 × 80 cm
Exhibition View "Consciousness Dialogues", a solo exhibition by Christian Bazant-Hegemark, at [FKc] FORUM KUNST contemporary
Morning Sun, 2021 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
Midday Sun, 2021 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
Lockdown Sun, 2021 | pencil on paper
50 × 70 cm
"The deepest pain that we have to face is the aloneness and loneliness and the wrenching experience of powerlessness with respect to those feelings that we experienced as children. All our craziness is caused by our reluctance to experience these feelings. All our ego protections start with the fear of that pain."
"Healing Your Aloneness", Erika J. Chopich & Margaret Paul
Invisible Time, 2023 | oil on canvas
140 × 250 cm | 55 × 98 in
You Are Not Alone, 2021 | pencil on paper
50 × 70 cm
You Are Complete, 2021 | pencil on paper
50 × 70 cm
I Tried, 2021 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
Intimacy, 2022 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
Don't do it. Don't split up., 2022 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
The Child, 2022 | pencil on paper
42 × 29.7 cm
Exhibition View "Consciousness Dialogues", a solo exhibition by Christian Bazant-Hegemark, at [FKc] FORUM KUNST contemporary

Recreating Time: About this work series

Paintings and drawings offer a space beyond time. They exist before your birth, and after your death. They too are part of a sequence, but it’s an object-based reality; we attach meaning to them, yet they themselves just are, if that could ever be true.

Paintings and drawings take up space, but have a different relationship to time than e.g. film or music. You can experience a drawing in its potential entirety, purely focusing on your experience of it. Time passes as a result of your focus, not of the medium changing.

Paintings and drawings, at least in the traditional sense, exist visually and haptically, but not auditively. There is a unique, minimalist focus on the visual that can be experienced as meditative. Figuration per se might break this minimalism for some – but that’s not my point.

Why draw the world, when drawing would enable you to synthesize any other world?

Unlike photography, paintings and drawings reference the internal first – everything that happens on the medium (paper, canvas, etc.) was synthesized by someone; every stroke, surface, likeness. Where photography by necessity references the external (the world), this offers a choice to those working beyond photography, beyond the preexisting external.

It’s a weird, maybe anachronistic situation then, to paint or draw in a world that has photographic, and even AI technology. When painting used to originally be a medium of external reference (to depict a world that didn’t yet invent photography), this task is no longer required of it. Why then reflect this way on a world, that can so easily be captured by other means? Why draw the world, when drawing would enable you to synthesize any other world? Why draw what happened, when you could envision a future?

 

As usual, there are many answers – in the context of these works, I have to admit that I didn’t feel like creating a future, but rather to capture a specific past. Time is personal, and the act of drawing lets me capture that. I’m working through things past; drawing photos, referencing an externality that is gone – to recreate time. For myself.

It's Not Black And White, 2022 | pencil on paper
70 × 50 cm
"The driving motivation in chaotic families is learning to please. Love is based on neediness and emotional hunger. [...] There is a lot of failure in chaotic families. People try hard but they never quite make it. [...] Children from chaotic families are often set up to take care of the needs of their families."
"Creating Love", John Bradshaw