Painting 17: assisted fresco

Painting 17: assisted fresco (2025) brings together several contexts for investigation and viewing of painting: Dansaekhwa monochrome painting, Sienese trecento and Fresco painting.

Sienese painting belongs to the early Renaissance when artists such as Duccio and Simone Martini from the city of Siena made panel paintings. These works had a portable quality often conceived as small travel size icons or through the production of hinged altarpieces (triptychs and polyptychs). These transportable works were intended for domestic or mobile contexts for worship where physical proximity was as important as the visual experience.

The use of the term 'assisted' is in reference to Duchamp's assisted readymade series, where Duchamp brought together or adapted found objects, such as in Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? (1921/1964), consisting of 152 marble cubes, a thermometer and a cuttlefish bone in a birdcage. the work a transportable quality. Underpinning this work is a narrative about the portable quality of travel size icons, and reference to the American artist David Navros’‘portable frescoes’, suggesting that this painting too is to be taken on a journeys or pilgrimages.

• https://bsr.ac.uk/winter-open-studios-20...
• https://bsr.ac.uk/meet-the-artists-juan-...
• https://juanbolivar.com/home.html