Developed during a residency at The Cabin, Versus approaches combat as a form of dialogue between different systems of knowledge.
The series brings together two traditions of ritualized struggle: ancient Greek pankration and Mexican lucha libre. Although separated by geography and history, both transform the fighting body into a symbolic figure. Combat exceeds sport and becomes an arena in which moral, philosophical, and cosmological forces are enacted.
Within the paintings, figures associated with pre-Socratic philosophy confront masked wrestlers who appear as ambiguous, almost shamanic presences. Their encounters evoke a moment before philosophy separated itself from mythology, when the world was understood through elemental forces, dualities, and continual transformation.
These traditions are not reconciled. Instead, the wrestling ring becomes a speculative space in which distinct cosmologies collide and expose their unexpected resonances. Opposition operates as a productive structure: a way of thinking through difference without resolving it.
This confrontation also occurs materially. The encaustic surfaces are repeatedly fused, burned, scraped, and reconstructed. Figures emerge and disappear within layers of molten beeswax and pigment, leaving the painting suspended between archive and battlefield.
In Versus, victory is secondary. Combat becomes a method of encounter through which bodies, images, and systems of thought test one another’s limits.
