Inertia

Through spirals and voids, I construct mental landscapes that explore rumination, hyperfixation, and self-destructive patterns. Together, these seven paintings form a continuous horizontal landscape that invites viewers to move through the work as they would a psychological terrain—one where orientation is uncertain and moments of clarity are obscured by accumulation.

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The series draws inspiration from the ant mill, a natural phenomenon in which a group of army ants, separated from their colony, begin following one another in an endless circle until they collapse from exhaustion. What begins as an instinct for survival becomes a closed system of self-destruction. This phenomenon serves as a framework for understanding my own relationship with trauma. Revisiting memories in an attempt to make sense of them often becomes a repetitive cycle that creates the illusion of progress while leading only to deeper exhaustion.

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Each painting is built through successive layers of oil paint that conceal, reveal, and blur what came before. These accumulated surfaces mirror the experience of thoughts building upon one another, where each new layer simultaneously adds depth and obscures perspective. The resulting spaces create a psychological environment shaped by repetition, erosion, and persistence. 

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Underlying the work is a tension between momentum and stagnation. The desire to create, improve, and move forward exists alongside an equally powerful tendency to remain caught within familiar patterns of thought. The spiral becomes both a formal device and a metaphor for this contradiction: movement that appears purposeful, yet continually returns to itself. Rather than illustrating trauma directly, these paintings examine the systems through which it is revisited, reinforced, and ultimately inhabited.