Crash

Evaristti was on a long stay in Bangkok in 1995 as visiting professor at the Silipakorn Fine Arts University. In Bangkok, Evaristti experienced the struggle between life and death at close quarter with over thirty road traffic casualties every day. Evaristti was given permission by the authorities in Bangkok to accompany the investigators to the various accidents. Here he was able to gather blood, the remains of clothing and parts of the wreckages from the accident scenes. Evaristti applied the blood to either canvas or paper, in an expression mixed with tyre impressions and an urban landscape consisting of high-rise buildings drawn in black ink. In an intermingling of the inner life source (the blood) and the inner life form of the person captured in a bloody urban seriousness, these works with all of their inherent presence are specifically composed of the disaster itself. A fundamental element of the work is the fact that Evaristti does not "falsify" the impression of the blood on the canvases, but that it is the blood that is being used to paint. In his method, the artist refers to an old statement from Picasso that art is a representation of reality expressed through a lie. Evaristti’s method is to distort this and to bring reality into the work as a carrier of meaning – this is not a lie. This has been done and if one wishes to form an opinion, on must first and foremost relate to what is actually on the canvas.