art tart®
Berlin München



art tart explained


Image of Berlin lesbian feminist artist art tart aka Michèle Marie Bonnarens

My work is guided by a religious instinct both in its production and its content. The act of painting is a type of individual meditation; the result is a visual record of the processing of the perceived elements of my particular lived universe. I say “perceived elements” because much of what I “see” is a product of my language and cultural background, which provide important points of entry for “experiencing” something, in the sense of structuring and naming it.

While this structuring occurs primarily outside of consciousness, my art is a place to reflect upon these organizational attempts, proceeding from the belief that perception is an ongoing process. In trying to return to places we have already thought, in the sense of finding sense and meaning, a culture produces and reproduces a variety of symbols. A recurring symbol within my work is “Woman”.

“Woman” has a religious sense within my work because the cultural associations around Woman make this symbol a critical point for reflecting on ourselves and our place in the universe, whatever our biology may be. My paintings offer a place for the viewer to enter into their own meditation on the structuring of experience.

Setting Woman in a seemingly familiar environment, the use of line adding to the sense of clear definitions, the viewer is invited to cross these lines for a deeper view; to shift between the big picture and the abstract elements. Attaining this deeper view demands holding a number of competing perceptions together. The resulting visual dynamic is meant to support a similar mental processing of the symbol Woman and a deeper reflection on our individual position within and to social order.