R.I.P. - Really Interesting People
Since 2009, 190 x 150 cm, oil on raw linen.
Ende In February, the portrait of Jan — the old painter friend — came into being. Now that he has died, she paints him. The face may be the place where leaving this world becomes most visible. His physical presence is slowly dissolving. It’s as if, with one eye still slightly open, he casts a final, critical gaze upon this world. The other half of his face has sunken and grown heavy — already just a shell.
- Dorothe Freiburghaus
In the English-speaking world, R.I.P. stands for Rest In Peace. But in Magaña’s work, it becomes Really Interesting People — a series dedicated to those who have disappeared from her circle of friends and family. The causes of death vary: Some fell asleep, some fought, some lost themselves, some had accidents.
The black in these paintings does not merely mark absence.
It becomes the total, the negation, the echo of all colours.
These memento mori explore the fragile boundary between form and void, between body and shadow, between presence and memory.
Black is like a feeling of going inside something, like confronting fear...When you are making something, it feels really alive; but when this process of making is finished, it’s finished. It does have something to do with death...that’s why you keep making more work... - Chohreh Feyzdjou (Künstlerin, 1955 - 1996)
Ersoy Altiok († ca. 1998)
Jan Balet (1913–2009)
Deanna Dooly (1970–1983) & Valentine (†1983)
Paul Elias-Toulakany (?)
Max Gygax (1916–2007)
Erika Jakob (1917–2000)
Johann Jakob (1921–1996)
Alexander Magaña (1940–1997)
Eugenie Magaña de Ford (1917–2007)
Raoul D. Magaña (1911–2007)
Bruno Manser (1954 – verschollen seit 2000)
Claudia Meier (1968–1997)
Ruth Nievergelt (1951–1999)
Jacqueline Rotzler (1965–2008)
Frau Tschiemer (†1995)
Gabriella Tschiemer-Ross (†2006)