The body of work under the title ‘Systole Diastole’ explores sympathy and antipathy as two alternating ways of relating to the world. Sympathy is understood as openness, connection, and dissolution into the other, while antipathy represents withdrawal, resistance, and separation. Both
attitudes are seen as necessary existential functions and are linked to the rhythm of the heart through the concepts of systole and diastole: expansion and contraction.
The work reflects on life in a world of overstimulation, questioning whether there is still enough space for disconnection and rest. It also asks how constant emotional openness may affect our ability to form genuine and sustainable connections, especially when we are overwhelmed.
Through words, drawings, and sculptural objects, the project investigates the spectrum between these two states of being. The works exist between the conceptual and the physical, often taking semi-abstract and morphic forms. The sculptures, made primarily from fibrous materials and ceramics, embody transactional and relational forms of life beyond the purely human. The drawings connect multiple layers of existence through mythical and symbolic imagery. Together, the objects, images, and texts form an interconnected whole.
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From the left edge of the frame a fast-walking figure appears. They cannot be classified. It is someone who started alone. It is someone who started somewhere, over and over again at once.
The world solidifies and dissolves.
The figure entered to reveal where the beginning or the end was, but they never came to a turning point.
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Opening. Paper, wood and thread. 288 x 90 x 90 cm. §
From the timid seed a storm of hope arose.
The hope was full, and the hope was empty: it did not sleep,
But it devoured everything that was better if it did as it should.
The timid seed laid its ears along the wall and snuck up,
without the desire to sing or to be sung to.
The birth of the great shared instability that broke everything,
through mid-fours and again and again until each one was alone,
until all parts forgot to what whole they once belonged.
Timid seed settled down and soaked into timid germ.
There it grew rebellious into a peacekeeping force who asked
again and again;
if there could be some silence now; to be merciful.
In each silence grew the hope that peace was beautiful and desirable.
Sometimes there seemed to be attention and space,
to be in the moment and breathe as it passed in joy.
All witnesses found that silence was not the end,
but the beginning; a space for the emergence of something real.
The timid grass was loud when the others were polite.
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Unrooted, Hovering Still Above. Ceramics, rope, onion peel dye. 45 x 45 x 35 cm.
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The emptiness under my diaphragm sounds like a gesture that declares me flawed.
I stumble into the enormous hollow emptiness that I call my soul.
Having drunk so much water to fulfill.
What had put hope in the offing hurts.
The hole is filled with all or nothing.
My inadequate, nerve-wracking something is missing.
So that everything there screeches and roars for a while.
Half an arch and nothing, there is thirst.
A semicircle and there is a horizon.
There very far down behind the skin it pulls over my belly.
Contents and flesh and far in front of my spine floats a heavy dense circle.
A hollow emptiness asks without words or form.
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As if a border exists. Weaving; mixed textiles and wood. 26 x 30 x 55 cm.§
I notice that it is there;
That I'm not there.
The image is not where I am.
It's where I take off and think.
It looks at me and is silent.
It looks at me and makes an attempt to turn me inside out.
It takes the skin; our skin between it's fingers.
It dresses up with that thing.
It always goes like this.
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It Takes the Skin, Our Skin, and Tries to Turn it Inside Out. Canvas, rust, mixed textiles, wood. 140 x 85 cm.
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I'm glad I'm so sick, it's fair.
I've never been so sick and when I breathe - I cry.
My ears are ringing and my thoughts are empty.
But not as empty as my soul.
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Tearing Up, Pouring Out. Weaving, red cabbage dye, mixed textiles. 256 x 38 cm.
Out on a Walk (twice). Charcoal drawings. 50 x 75 cm. §
On the way, there is a warm unsteady body, younger.
She afraid to live on, her body sweet and soft.
Arrived in a body, a life too big, or her body too small.
On a flight out of her skin, shrank from fear within.
The ground is different than she had hoped.
Cautiously moving forward on her toes, she unfolds in a play between the air and her membrane.
As if she doesn't exist here yet, her balance falls out of her legs.
The shape is gentle and from the front almost like the back.
She is having a day off today and is now trying to escape from herself.
(escape)
There is an emptiness with a dog along the way.
He is a negation and called out 'here', as if he had something to say.
From the deep void, nothing was heard, and the dog listened to the body.
The hollow emptiness panicked and paler than the clouds.
Greyest, a veil of sleep deprivation lays over his ears.
Present in every moderate day, the yawning and the waking.
An awakening that leads nowhere, but reveals itself between bare teeth.
Between the gaping lips, the squinting eyes, and the curling wrinkles on the forehead.
The only mechanism that is both connecting and obstructing, contagious.
(contagious)
On the way is the dog of the emptiness.
The dog is happy to be at a distance, that's why it runs so fast.
The dog is dutifully driven by desire for the ball.
He wouldn't be able to empty the hole precisely, but he could fill it.
The dog knew what fulfilment was and ran around the hole.
It was its task to bring the light until it would close.
(bringing the light)
On the way is an uninhibited beginning, seemingly like a blade of grass.
Almost blown away by the wind and absorbed into everything, the field.
With wonder, having reached every part, hands on, into the eyes.
The child far ahead of the rest, lagging behind in things.
It devours space, as if it were air, as if it leads to breathing.
The whole into the distance in a direction, sees light not only to absorb.
Catching all gazes, not smoothly but radiantly, with an innocence that penetrates their will.
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Exchange 1. Polished wood and fired earthenware. 122 x 10 x 12 cm. 
Sympathy Sympathy. Weaving, onion and red cabbage dye, linnen and cotton. 83 x 75 cmJesse Blaauw
We are entangled in the world. The world is entangled in us.
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