During the seven months that the painter Manuel Mathieu was at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, his studio was often my fallback place. In times that have been stressful for me (and others around me), I have been taught to engage in friendship and to find rest in it, as well as to find peace in the surroundings of Mathieu’s paintings. We talked a lot about madcap places in our mind, vulnerability, and deliberation. Above all, we spoke about the new body of work he created for the show Survivance, which was supposed to open in May in the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and what strength we can draw from the concept of flexibility and the ability to create spaces to imagine alternative future(s). He says that many of us are vulnerable beings in an uncomfortable world, and sharing these states generously with each other is an act of caring for each other and the future. Trying to liberate himself from certain expectations from the art world, he prefers to talk about generosity rather than catastrophe. This written exchange manifests a series of get-togethers and phone calls, in which a relationship was formed between us as colleagues and friends
