Jelena Berenc

Liquid charcoal on paper

Universe is a wall size installation mosaicked by the small textured charcoal drawings. The mosaicked installation is in a shape of an oval resembling the current imagery of the Cosmic Background Radiation and Map of the visible Universe. One small drawing has two minuscule figures drawn, practically invisible, symbolizing humanity. The figures are independently looking down. There is no order to the drawing tiles, hence every time the piece is installed it is in different random order and visually different.

The process: Liquid charcoal and water are applied first onto the paper. Charcoal pencil is used at the end to emphasize already created textures. The charcoal creates textures by following the paper’s surface texture and water, accumulating more or less in different areas, resulting in 3D implied visual space. There is a correlation between drawing creation process and that of the visible Universe. Superficially looking, paper and water are invisible and insignificant part of the drawing, considering that we observe and are interested in a drawing appearance and not the surface it is on. However, the blank paper and water are an invisible scaffolding that dictates where the charcoal will collect, consequently the appearance of the drawing at the end. The Universe is mostly made of Dark Energy (71.4%) and Dark Matter (24%), which has a strong influence on its structure and evolution, and affects the universe on the largest scales. Dark matter is invisible (it does not interact with the electromagnetic field) yet determines the structure, just like paper does. Water, mysteriously forces charcoal matter to move and collect, causing it to spread/expand.

Individual pieces of the Universe are installed randomly each time the piece is installed resulting in a different configuration of the apparent Universe.

Meaning: Humans are practically infinitesimal specs, as shown with the insignificantly miniscule drawing of human figures among large-scale piece. Figures are looking down, introspecting their own melancholy, not interacting nor looking at the vastness of the space around them. Intricate textures of the charcoal drawings symbolizes the complexity of all that the visible universe is comprised off.

Sizes very from 1”x1” to 60”x130”

Mixed media

The attempt is the impossible goal of making 50K drawings for my 50th year of existence (2026). Drawings are to be done on any format, with any material, of anything.

The impossibility of the task is not only in its massive physicality and labor but even more so in its cognitive demand. Can one even conger 50K words, much less 50K statements or drawings with the particular subject matter, within which there are a significant number of individualized decisions and statements? Can one continually talk about 50K things, using visual language?

- Drawings are informational collection of personal memories, visual stimuli, observations, and thoughts.

If the goal is impossible should it still be attempted?

As a whole, piece’s information quantity is so large and complex, 50K drawings, that no one person will ever be capable of perceiving its totality but only its parts; an image here and image there; one at the time. Opinion will be construed and based on a selected few images that were cognitively registered and picked among immense stimuli. Among all the information offered within the piece there is a great number of possible possibilities, but in a moment of observation, viewer’s brain collapses them all into one state, one view, one opinion. World as an individualized construct through interaction.

68” x 30”

Paper

Process: 16,787, the number of days I have been alive, are scratched onto the paper.

Each day leaves a physical trace on our somatic and cognitive selves, reforming and forming us. Experiences scar us. Scars form us.

Pencil on paper

170” x 41”

Process: Paper is wrinkled and crumpled before drawing a portrait. The grooves, rips, and wrinkles on the paper determine, to a different degree, where the pencil will leave a mark and the quality of the mark. The drawing follows the surface and is determined by it. 

The piece: Self is molded into, or as a reaction to the environment it is within (family, culture, climate, etc.), as much as by the biological system we are comprised of. Our beliefs, our knowledge comes from others. Every original thought is, at its best, derived from a combination of previously accounted thoughts, but usually, it is a thought we accounted for in the past, forgot about its resource and then freely claimed it is our own. Physical Self, Self-cognition, and actions (choices that Self makes) are predetermined by the interactions within and between its biological micro parts, and the world around. Every attempt to self create the Self is dictated by what is already in the world and interactions with it, which is no different than attempting to draw a portrait where each pencil mark is dictated by the surface it is on. Free choices are made where and how the mark should be placed but the outcome of it is defined by the paper’s surface as it deforms and alters the mark based on its topography and textures. 

Physical Self, Self-cognition, and free will, exist only within the constraints of the law of physics, social, and biological rules, and our interactions with it.

h42” x w42”

Left and right hand are making a drawing simultaneously keeping the identical rhythm of the stippling marks.  

The Outcome: The source, our brain, sends a signal to two different targets, left and right hand. The detector, in this case paper, documents the outcome of the source being at the two places at the same time. However, the cloud of possibility collapses for each mark created, due to the ever so slightly imperceptible changes of the conditions (an angle of the pencil, pressure, rhythm, etc.). Left and right drawing will resemble one another but it will not be the same. However, an individual mark on the left and right side, might be in a state of the entanglement. Longer the drawing process, the more chances we have to correlate two respective marks with the same property. 

Mixed media

2.25” x  1 mile (1,609 meters or 5,280 feet)

Process: Originally created in 2004, as a kilometer long drawing of portraits, was expanded to a mile long drawing in 2022. The piece is installed on the film reels and the viewer can observe only a few feet at the time as they rewind the reels. 

The Piece: One mile long drawing represents all the possible selves even though the viewer can observe only one or few portraits at the time. They all ARE simultaneously in the superposition existence, that we, or the observer, collapse into one state, one impression of a character at the time. Our perceptual cognition has not yet evolved into complex enough consciousness to be able to comprehend the whole mile of portraits. Until that happens we must do the hard work of rewinding the reel in order to perceive. How much are we not aware of, within and around us?

Marker on paper

8.5” x 5.5” x 3.5”

Process: 1,000 page book has total of 4% filled-in pages with the bits while the rest is blank, corresponding to the 4% of the known about the Universe, and 96% of the unknown. Filled in pages are fragmented and at the beginning of the book just like our collective knowledge of any subject is fragmented and missing. Estimate of 500,000 mark bits. 

Knowledge helps us see, understand the state of our being and ultimately Be in Reality. Currently all that is known in the Universe, neutrons, protons, and electrons that make up everything we can see accounts for only about 4% of the mass and energy of the Universe. About 70% of the Universe is what is dark energy; about 26% is dark matter, and this 96% is unknown. All that humanity has ever discovered and learned accounts for 4% of the Universe. There is 96% that we know that we do not know. How much more is there that we do not know that we do not know? Is our consciousness not complex enough to see the unknown even though we are staring at the answers? Knowing the unknown is incomparably much more real than not knowing at all.

Pencil and Marker on paper

2.75” x 2.75”, Each of 365

Process: Paper is field with 1440 marks daily, number of minutes in 24 hours. 365 pieces of paper in total, one for each day in a year. Colored-in is the number of awake minutes daily.

The piece: Being aware of every minute of existence makes one experience the relativity of the time arrow perception.

Pencil on paper

h46” x w220”

In the piece Reality, 2020 random continuous lines are drawn with pencil on paper, h 46” x w 220”. The piece was first completed in 2011 as a random cloud of continuous line capturing passing of time. As the piece was revisited in 2020 it needed more of something, and more random lines were included, more information was added, more depth it had and more imagery appeared (portraits), till the piece have reached its maximum information state and the piece was complete, it was finished. It had the most random lines, and no new information could be added, meaning the piece is completed. It is its death of creation and the beginning of simply being. Once art piece reaches the state of maximum information the piece is over. The piece might live through observers but for the creator it is no more. I wonder if life itself may exist that way, individually and as a whole, as all the life. We keep going towards the maximum information, we learn, we live, till no more information can be added, we reach maximum disorder, and than life is over.

Reality, 2020

Pencil on paper, h46” x w220”

Reality, 2020

Pencil on paper, h46” x w220”

Reality, 2020

Pencil on paper, h46” x w220”

Reality, 2020

Pencil on paper, h46” x w220”

Photo Copyright: Katerina Christianopoulou

Pencil on paper

h54"x w84" each of two

In the first drawing, bits of information, in this case melancholic portraits, create peacefulness and tranquility of the entire image. Portraits vary from 1mm to 1cm in size. Anything that exists, reality, only exists by the virtue of the mutual information it shares with other objects in the Universe, as information theory explains. Each bit/portrait defines and shapes the space of the other. Collectively, bits define the whole, yet when observing the entire image the well defined bits become unperceivable. Just the same, when observing the bits a tranquil perception of the entire imagery is not perceivable any longer. Even if the bit defines the whole, a bit is unlike the whole.

In the second drawing, portraits are blank. The space for information is present, but the information itself is not. Even though the information within the space is unknown, it is blank, the entirety of the image is fully comprehensible. How do we perceive the space of the missing information within the bits? Do we project previously perceived portraits, or are we capable of creating new perceptions? How different, if any, is our perception of the whole depending on our knowledge of the parts?  By knowing a bit can we automatically claim the knowledge of the whole?

55,000 portraits and 95,000 blank portraits; there is more of the unknown then of the known.

Unknown of the Known, 2017/2019

Pencil on paper

h54"x w84" each of two

55,000 portraits and

95,000 blank portraits

Unknown of the Known, 2017/2019

Pencil on paper

h54"x w84" each of two

55,000 portraits and

95,000 blank portraits

Wood stain, ink, watercolor, gesso, collage

Approximately h48” x w100”

Each of 10 large brick-like pieces is made of smaller, life size, ripped paper bricks. Tiny bricks are then drawn with watercolors on the brick-like surface. Bricks made of bricks that are made of bricks.

Wood stain, ink, watercolor, gesso, collage

Approximately h48” x w100”

Each of 10 large brick-like piece is made of smaller, life size, ripped paper bricks. A tiny bricks are then drawn with watercolors on the brick-like surface. Bricks made of bricks that are made of bricks.

6.5”x7.5”

pencil on paper

Pencil on paper

Book format

Process : A continuous pencil drawing was made while reading a book.

Raymond Queneau, Pierrot Mon Ami, Louis Ferdinand Celin, Castle to Castle, Rene Crevel, My body and I, Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, Jose Saramago, Seeing, Reiner Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Henri Michaux, Stroke by Stroke, Leon Lederman, The God Particle, Rory Stewart, The Places in Between, Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, James Lord, A Giacometti portrait, Jose Saramago, Death with Interruptions, Victor Pelevin, 4 by Pelevin, Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self, How Our Brains become who we are, Victor Pelevin, Babylon, Boris Vian, Blues for a Black Cat and Other Stories, Patrick Wall, Pain: The Science of Suffering, Naguib Mahfouz The Journeu of Ibn Fattouma, Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, Vlatko Verdral, Decoding Reality

Pencil on paper

Book format

Process : A continuous pencil drawing was made while reading a book.

Raymond Queneau, Pierrot Mon Ami, Louis Ferdinand Celin, Castle to Castle, Rene Crevel, My body and I, Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, Jose Saramago, Seeing, Reiner Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Henri Michaux, Stroke by Stroke, Leon Lederman, The God Particle, Rory Stewart, The Places in Between, Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, James Lord, A Giacometti portrait, Jose Saramago, Death with Interruptions, Victor Pelevin, 4 by Pelevin, Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self, How Our Brains become who we are, Victor Pelevin, Babylon, Boris Vian, Blues for a Black Cat and Other Stories, Patrick Wall, Pain: The Science of Suffering, Naguib Mahfouz The Journeu of Ibn Fattouma, Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, Vlatko Verdral, Decoding Reality

Detail