If This Is A Man

2015 acrylic on canvas, 180x180cm

Primo Levi - If this is a Man

This painting is something of a commentary on the importance of the witness. The colours that emerge from Primo Levi's account of his concentrationary existence (barely life) at Auschwitz, are the only readable factor in a grey abstracted field. The colours are highly symbolic and meaningful. The preponderance of gold, for example, is referential to the gold extracted from Jewish teeth in the concentration camps. The exterior grey border is also a nod to the debates about the representability or otherwise of the Holocaust, without being a symbol of it.