‚transient‘ was inspired by a work at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich: ‘Frau mit Telefon’ by Norbert Tadeusz, 1967, showing a woman sitting on a chair naked and holding an old school telephone to her ear.

I translated the scenery into a triptych self-portrait in a contemporary setting, picking up on smartphones playing a huge role in our connectivity and distance to and from each other nowadays. The subjects are naked, but their attention and posture withdrawn, ignoring the viewer. Among other, there are ambiguities in the in-between spaces of physical proximity and distance between the two subjects, the presence and the dissolving of the second subject, and a suggested but dissolved spatial localization of the scenery.

In frames 1 and 3 the protagonist is holding herself, while in frame 2 the second person is holding her and carrying her on her lap. Despite this, her left foot seems strained by the support and her left arm, emphasized in color and size, seems to set the tone in the intimate interaction. The impasto application of paint and the sharp edges of the protagonist contrast the dissolving watercolor technique of the colored background areas and parts of the second person in the middle frame, and the mobile phones in frames 1 & 3. The protagonist can be read as female, but both characters have androgynous elements and no unequivocal gender. Their extremities are nonproportional in their length, size and shape and are a focal point due to their arrangement and role in the interaction. 'transient' can be defined in many ways, including transitory, ephemeral, nonstationary, and a short-lived guest or pulse of electricity.