Field of Possibility

by Deborah Weber

Front Gallery - 07.03.24 - 18.04.24

Jung and later psychologists such as Marie-Louise von Franz have argued that people often project archetypal ideas onto things they don't understand as part of a natural response to the desire for a more predictable, understandable and clearly-patterned world. Such projections are born out of a fear of emotions and experiences that have been repressed. Their own responses and emotions then become replaced by archetypes. One of the most important ways people can access their individual experiences and feelings is through art, which acts as a conduit from conscious to unconscious life.

In this body of work artist Deborah Weber explores the emotional potential held by art which enables the viewer to access states of being in the unconscious mind. The feeling individual is never an island, but is always part of a larger community, so Weber’s art gives shape to emotional states either in response to events in the wider social or political environment, or from a deeply personal inner world.

Weber, after a long time in her career spent as a collaborative artist in groups of creative practitioners responding to burning social issues in South Africa, such as land restitution, gender violence and sexuality, used the isolation imposed by Covid lockdowns to turn inward in her artistic practice. The focus of this current body of work emerges from that process of introspection and a more individuated approach to connecting with viewers and their emotions. In that approach, the methods of automatism and automatic drawing became an important mechanism for Weber.

The process of automatic drawing first came to prominence in avant-garde art in the early 20th century, and was a way of suppressing conscious control over the mark-making process, allowing the unconscious emotions to be expressed in the finished work. Weber uses the automatic drawing approach to access her own unconscious emotional field, which is expressed through the characteristic recurring line work and biomorphic shapes that people the exhibition. These are then translated into colour on canvas, fabric and ceramics – a process in which the effect of unconsciously expressed emotion is very important. Colour is always evocative of emotion, a process we rarely understand on a conscious level.

In this body of work the viewer becomes the interlocutor between the unconscious, the world of meaning and their own emotions. The works are mostly playful, sometimes menacing, irreverent, vibrant or perplexing, asking of the viewer to experience the power of their own emotional responses through the symbolic interpretation of the works.

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Field of Possibility

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