Mwangi Hutter: Falling in Love, Again

1 June - 21 July 2017

Believers in the existence of soul mates often say that individuals who maintain this connection share a soul split across a two bodies. Mwangi Hutter embodies this belief. The husband and wife duo maintain a joint artistic practice in the service of a single vision. This doesn't imply that they are working together all the time, or at the same time, but rather that the execution of their shared vision is about their diverse parts coming together to form a whole, in pursuit of a common understanding of what it means to be one.

 

"It was perhaps the artist who first burnt a hand while lifting fire to leave a mark on the wall that was not fame at the age of dawn, but rather a wish to remember. Taking shape, from a finger print to a single line, a field of color, a form. To reveal an image that plays itself repeatedly, earwigged in that sensitive place of the visual mind that yearns to feel bliss. Then bursting into a show of exciting and useful things that take hold to guide the procedures of life. Lovers lie in embrace in defiance of loneliness and loss. It's a world of enjoyment and repose, a brilliance within which distance dissolves. These are defining moments, in which one experiences oneself through the intimate medium of other. It is like meeting oneself for the first time. We will inevitably fall from grace and find ourselves separate and full of longing to be united once again. But for this time now, a pulsating and simple reality is exposed, stripped of thoughts of what was, is or might be," states Mwangi Hutter. 

 

Oil, acrylic paint, liquid chalk are the component parts of the paintings in Falling In Love, Again. Mwangi Hutter comprises two artists combine their bodies to create one experience of pleasure. The paints soak into the canvas outlining the male and female bodies. Where the white paint spills into the black and the black into the white, the color grey emerges symbolic of the unison achieved in intimacy. Hands and arms melt and curve around each body. The male arms buoys the female back as it leans and turns in ecstasy. The journey towards pleasure goes deeper.

 

The bodies become inextricable, having achieved oneness.