The work "Eleventh" (2020) is part of the project "Eliminated archive" (2016-2020). 

"While studying at the art academy, I was looking for my own place to concentrate, my own studio. Moving from one place to another, I always took all of my materials and paintings, although every time there were more of them and I needed to organize the space in order to fit them in.

Over time, the studio got cramped and paintings were everywhere. Old oil paintings that remind me of my learning and the stages that I’ve gone through became a pile of memories, rolled onto the shelves and covered with dust. This experience demands transformation. I experiment with my paintings, check their durability, take them off the subframe and pour boiling water on them, finally leaving them rolled in for a night. In the morning, I wash them rubbing one part of the painting against the other. I scrub and destroy the layers of paint until the image is no longer recognizable. Everything that has fallen off is redundant. Everything that is left becomes a part of the new work.

This project in trying to get back to the source. Going back to the previous layers and up to the bare canvas, I leave the pieces of different layers of paint there.

That’s how I erase all the stories, textures and color balances created during various stages of my development as an artist. After I wash the painting, I see previous sketches and traces between the chunks of the paint still left of the surface. These traces symbolize the information that has been lost and can never be recovered. One can only guess what image may have been there. The peeling is a process of partial loss of information, it confuses all the shapes and colors and creates new combinations of spots that form a totally new composition."

Polina Shcherbyna