Synchronisation

Green mountains, mist coming down from the sky, and a river running between the peaks. “Synchronisation”, 100 × 80 cm, oil, from the “Another World” collection.

The work is about Dagestan. I invented no landscape; those summits are standing there right now.

Mountains and people live at one rhythm there. Every stone with a memory, every path with tracks, the river reflecting the sky and hurrying nowhere.

The texture stayed dense on the mountains and loose on the mist. The mist reads as moving because of it, though it was painted once.

Synchronisation is when the breathing of a body has matched the breathing of the land. The moment is short and very noticeable.

I let the river find its own way. No bed was laid out for it in advance: I led the palette knife and watched where it would go between the peaks.

Power and fragility are always next to each other up there. In mountains you never meet one without the other.

It hangs well in a hallway or a study, where you pass it close.