What Warms What Burns

Can the same experience hold both salvation and destruction, an Icarian flight and then the fall? The sun is a vivid answer to the rhetorical question “What warms and what burns?” but it makes no distinction between the two—the difference between them is the distance between life and death. The sun simply shines. We are the ones who move closer or pull away, asking ourselves how near we can stand to what we desire before we turn to ash.

The works in this exhibition trace different moments in my movement between drawing close and pulling back. Each painting is an attempt to grasp the paradox of intimacy—that closeness with another, with a dream, with oneself, requires both surrender and self-preservation. Between desire and fear exists a distance that is never constant. This exhibition is an attempt to measure it.

Instalation views from the exhibition WHAT WARMS, WHAT BURNS in Narrativa gallery, 2026