Pontus Raud

In the painting “ Marla “ from 2012, we see Marla Bendini, a transsexual artist from Singapore, carrying out a performance in the “Rainbow Art Projects” booth at Supermarket Stockholm Independent Art Fair 2012. As project leader of the art fair, I don´t have enough time to experience the exhibitions. In this case I took a quick photo when I rushed past Marla’s performance while having thoughts elsewhere. I chose this moment to be one of my starting points for the exhibition “Total Recall” - a documentary relationship.
Painting is time consuming and there were moments of reflection on Marla’s nakedness and her status as a transsexual in her homeland. Painting for me is a lot about the room and the light. I use a lot of digital photos and I use Adobe Photshop. I like to play with Photoshop and its imaginary chequerboard image of the transparent surface. Together with Marla’s performance and my painting, the image becomes a contemporary phenomenon, where the presentation is increasingly becoming the main ingredient.
In the video “That Room we Talked About” I continue the game with Photoshop symbols of non-existent plans where the minefield (which is located in the border between Syria and Turkey) is one of our reality non-existent fields. I can well imagine that we eventually dissolve reality through our global context. Maybe we finally choose a custom documentation as the basis via a digital forum. A story that is tailored to us from different social parameters- a vegan’s mathematics.