Category: Painting & Archive

Sonder (part 2)

Below is my artist statement for the Sonder exhibition at Acme Studios, on show until the end of October. (See previous post for details.)
For full image descriptions, jump to the end of this post.

This photograph in sepia tones shows two light-skinned young women, my grandfather’s nieces, side by side, their heads nearly touching.
This portrait shows a young woman seen in three quarters profile so that she’s looking towards us over her left shoulder, with a pensive or melancholy expression.
A sepia coloured portrait of a light skinned young woman seen from the shoulders up, her body faces backwards with her head turned towards us in three quarter profile.
Portrait shows a young man in his late teens or early twenties, in three quarter profile. His full clean shaven face is painted in tones of grey and he has a small curved nose.

My work in this exhibition consists of a series of gouache paintings inspired by photographs I found in an old photo album that belonged to my grandfather, Itche Achtman, who emigrated from Chelm, Poland to Montreal, Canada in 1927.  I didn’t really know him, as he died when I was just four years old, but it seems like I must have inherited his artistic genes– he was known to love literature and act in community theatre – and I always imagine that had he lived he would have been the relative most able to appreciate my own path in life.

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Sonder at Acme Studios

SONDER – a “TWO-PLUS-TWO” exhibition at ACME Studios, in association with filmpro

Paintings, vintage portraits and original photos by Çağlar Kimyoncu and Michael Achtman. Curated by Zeynep Dağlı.

Sonder: The feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles. The term was coined by John Koenig for his The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of invented words for emotions that are difficult to express. 

Lives caught in passing or forgotten. Portraits of people and spaces. The traces we leave behind.

A grid of four images includes a vintage photo portrait, a painted portrait, an urban photo and a postcard written in Yiddish.
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