Agnes Deja is a visual artist working mainly in painting and sculpture. Deja’s artistic work reflects her interest in environmental consciousness, the perception of space, kinesthetic memories and our accumulated evolutionary knowledge coming from the direct sensory experience of the world. Through her recent work process involving physically engaging gestural work Deja becomes aware of her personal memories including those of domestic labor and reflects on its classification in our society and the fate of historically underrepresented perspectives.

Deja’s recent work is made with acrylic painted and wire supported asphalt-infused paper. Deja is reusing and repurposing this found material, chosen to conceptually represent urban spaces as well environmental impact of urban sprawl. The artist creates flat-surface paintings which are then destroyed and manipulated in a gestural expressive way to build three dimensional sculptural forms. In the series called “Topographies” pieces are constructed from many segments painted in variating colors, and joined together to form a wall-hanging or free-standing sculpture or installation. The results are reminiscent among others of aerial views of geological formations: the soft bulbous round forms bordered by the deep crevices and the hard lines of irregular folds. The palette of highly saturated colors symbolizes the “photoshopped” representation of nature which despite its obvious artificiality remains attractive on some instinctive level (sways of hills with bodies of water etc), evoking our longing for open spaces and a nomadic journey into the unknown. In another series called “Off the Grid” the work is constructed from a wire grid and hand-shaped torn pieces of asphalt-infused paper, painted in lush colors. The title and physical construction refers to both the ecological movement towards sustainable energy use and the spatial intersection of painting and sculpture mediums. | www.agnesdeja.com