PROCESS DOCUMENTATION: Who is Afraid of the Image (ii),
Groningen, Late 2025–Early 2026

This Overview gives insight to the research, experimentation, development, articulation, and reflection of my personal artistic practise. It provides space to trace the path of my process—through its shifts, hesitations, breakthroughs, and evolving questions. This Overview is not about the final outcome, but about making visible the trajectory of my thinking, experimenting, and making. This is a small reflection on my materials, references, doubts, and findings, as well as the concepts and methods that shape my work.

In my practice, I give form to that which hides in plain sight, oscillating between revelation and denial. I work with the emotional and structural interior of the human body. My sources include clinical scans, anatomical archives, diagnostic images, and medical illustrations—materials that render invisible systems visible.

During my painting process, I am intrigued by the kind of beauty that lies in the depths of my own discomforts. I am drawn to images I cannot make sense of. When looking at diagnostic imagery, I encounter a visual clarity that does not lead to understanding. Instead, these images confront me with bodies exposed but made inaccessible, reduced to fragments, and markers whose meaning I cannot resolve. I collect, organize, look at, and paint work I did not imagine myself making—again and again, dealing with my own resistance towards these source materials. Painting becomes necessary when looking alone is no longer sufficient. It is not a means of explanation or resolution, but a way to remain with what resists interpretation. Thus, the act of painting allows me to remain in this unresolved state that lies within and beyond the image and to situate myself within it.

Many of my source images come from medical archives, or, in the case of diapositives, from collections I gathered during my time as a civil servant. When looking at these slides, orientation is unclear: left and right markings appear mirrored, images are inserted incorrectly, and directional arrows point without clarifying what they indicate. I notice shapes that begin to function as frames rather than organs, structures that resemble bone or skull-like contours without confirming themselves as such.

In my practice, I constantly move between figuration and abstraction; often, the two look alike. I make my own materials, such as oil sticks and transparent primers, and these serve as the basis for each work. Engaging directly with the painterly medium itself allows me to expand the range of possible expressions. Surface texture, transparency, and layering become tools I use to mirror the ambiguous qualities that fascinate me in clinical imagery. Symmetry and frontality, as they relate to diagnostic imaging, impose a composition that simultaneously exposes, fixates, and restrains what appears. Through monochrome, I create a space of suspended recognition: here, clarity dissolves, and the image remains in a state of flux between presence and absence.

Media owner:
Simon Scharinger
Plainwiesenweg 7
5101 Bergheim
contact@simon-scharinger.at

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© 2024 Simon Scharinger