Geometries of Depersonalization

Kovitz's art constantly redefines the boundaries. In The Lessons, he offers not only insight into his method, but also a profound meditation on the fundamental principles and mysteries of art making. The Lessons documents a series of paintings inspired by the dynamics of art education and the artist's creative process. Kovitz takes on the roles of thirty-four fictional art students who are asked to visualize concepts from a spiritual encyclopedia, beginning with standardized lesson sheets. These six black and white line drawings depict themes of art education, historical phenomena, and reactions to art, such as iconoclasm and appreciation. The result explores the tension between the systematic and the personal, as well as the role of imagination and visualization in our lives and in the production of art. Kovitz's works blend genres, and several paintings in this series have a deliberately unfinished quality that emphasizes the artwork as a residue of action and the artist's eternal question, “When is a work finished?”. Understanding art education as both method and metaphor, the book presents the process as a dialog between systematic approaches and the unpredictable emergence of expression. The underlying lesson sheets, reminiscent of pages in a coloring book, anchor the project, while the overpainting adds spontaneity. These layers - structured and impulsive - create a poetic tension and embody Kovitz's navigation between discipline and freedom. With its conceptual depth and experimentation, and texts by Chris Kraus, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, and Matthew Poole, it is an important contribution to contemporary art discourse.