Curated by Saša Bogojev: Controlled Freefall

Better safe than sorry. Failing to plan is planning to fail. It’s a common belief that control is a virtue and surrender is a weakness. Yet, few major breakthroughs or discoveries have come from playing it safe, and the most adventurous of us are the ones making significant changes. Likewise, painters who, to some extent, use unpredictability as part of their process are often the ones who create groundbreaking work. Although such work occasionally swerves beyond their cognition or senses, its revealing imperfections keep it irresistibly human. And at a time when high tech sets the bar for perfection and exceptionalism, when we’re obsessed with order and want to rationalize and explain everything, taking such a stand feels radical. This is why MARUANI MERCIER and curator Saša Bogojev are immensely proud to present Controlled Freefall, a display of artistic practices by Alessandra Acierno, Lorian Gwynn, Patrick H. Jones, and Waldemar Zimbelmann.

When Francis Bacon famously described himself as a “medium for accident and chance,” he positioned himself not as a documentarian or reproducer of life, but as an explorer of the unknown. Without a firm goal or set path, artists working this way let the creative flow redefine their role. Rather than making decisions, they simply set up the playfield and create the conditions for chance or happy accidents to materialize. As if reliving the moment of experiencing painting or drawing for the first time, when every mark felt like a novelty and a wonder, they’re turning their process into play driven by curiosity and trust.

From Matisse’s brush on a stick to Gerhard Richter’s squeegees, vanguard artists have searched for ways to let go of control and introduce accidents into their practice. These tools and techniques take power from their hands, forcing them to react intuitively to what the material delivers rather than pursue what was originally planned. By trusting the process, artists turn extraordinary textures, unprecedented color combinations, and unforeseen shapes into tools or elements to work with. Viewing error as a generative force, Patrick H. Jones defines his approach by “accepting the gifts given,” all while balancing his visual and emotional taste. Such an approach effectively removes the artist’s stroke as a signature, making the result less about the author and more about the work itself. For Waldemar Zimbelmann, that means “starting by attempting the portrait of an actual person,” then, through painterly experimentation, landing on an archetype of a human. Forced to find gut-feeling solutions to resolve the difficulties that arise, these painters are defined less by technique and skill than by their inquiring minds and fearlessness.

While this approach translates perfectly to abstract painting, its repercussions are even more compelling in representational or figurative work, as this exhibition demonstrates. Detached from conscious thought or concrete ideas, the work’s meaning isn’t limited to the artist’s intentions or existing information. For Lorian Gwynn, the collaging of images of family or friends with unrelated visuals prompts interpretation through the process itself, allowing “every layer, even the ‘failed’ ones, to be part of the final image.” This distancing from the artist’s deliberation goes beyond the mere subconscious and fully embraces playing the game of chance as a means of expression. “Painting is controlled freefall” is how Alessandra Acierno poetically describes the predicament that essentially relies on “following a series of accidents by reacting to the last one.” Honoring coincidence and the way small decisions can cause major changes, all these practices mirror the cosmic lottery and the random physical processes that built the universe.

Here, the notion that destruction is a form of creation becomes a conviction. Continuously tiptoeing around the possibility of ruining or destroying the piece, these artists echo Nietzsche’s words, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” By allowing chaos into the studio, they walk a creative tightrope, holding onto a flimsy balance between maintaining control and surrendering to the conditions. At the end of that quest, the finished painting stands as a transcript of a nerve-wracking journey built on intuitive reactions to an unpredictable environment.

— Saša Bogojev