Roza El-Hassan, an artist (b. 1966, Budapest) of dual Hungarian/Syrian nationality, represented Hungary at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Her two pencil and watercolor on paperworks seismographically record psychic states, a hyper sensibility which is the result of the artist's biography. Amidst many other exhibitions, the Kunstmuseum Basel included her work recently in Drawing Today.

Harriet Korman’s Untitled, from 2019, is part of a group of paintings based on the same formal device: nesting rectangles. These grew out of Korman applying several layers of paint, continuously and attentively adjusting the relationship between the bands in terms of width and colors. Usually categorized as “geometric abstraction”, these paintings aren’t “geometric” at all. They are structures grown out of process, an observed and intuitive probing, which visually manifests an abstract mental state, a state of being or consciousness - simultaneously porous and defined. Observe the quality of the center’s yellow strokes over green. Already in a 1975 Art Forum review, Roberta Smith describes the singular quality of Korman’s marks as [fluctuating] "... like breathing - between fragility and robustness."

In his paintings, Eli Bornowsky combines his own digital generative programs with traditional egg tempera on gessoed wood panels. The patterning here - better referred to as tiling - is based on a series of squares, triangles, and rhombs, which unfold (origami-like) through a program named by its three creators “Watanabe Ito Soma” while “substitution rules” partially interchanges these element. This creates an overall stable, though never repeating pattern (think of Islamic Geometry with an added element of disruption). A program then “walks” randomly over the tiling, assigning color to each element. Subsequent wanderings - departing from different points - add saturation to each shape depending on how many times a tile has been hit. Bornowsky etches the geometric tiling into the gesso surface by hand, and painting each tile, brushstroke by brushstroke with egg tempera, adds layers of visual interest, as do deviations from the assigned colors, depending on the artist’s aesthetic decisions. We experience here a work of rich complexity, which sits at the intersection of mathematical programming, craft and the artist’s intuition.

Magic Determinism, is a 1974 photo sequence by the German artist couple Anna and Bernhard Blume (1936-2020 and 1937-2011). A human being and an object - a jug - are brought not only into a formal but also puzzling interrelation between the human's and object's consciousness. Though not widely known in the US, throughout the years, the Blumes' work has been the subject of many and major institutional exhibitions (such as a 1989 MoMA Project or solo show at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1987). Translated from German, the text reads: "Magic Determinism is the term for the situation of occasionally being a jug. However, in that moment one's consciousness is reduced to that of being the jug. I would therefore be a jug without recognizing myself as such and would furthermore remain under the illusion - unlike the jug - to remain myself. But this is not like that. Bernhard Johannes Blume, 1976"

The works included in Art and Consciousness do not make use of the established symbolism usually associated with "Spiritual Art". Instead, this "charge" is pointed at through process as well as material and conceptual investigations. As an example, the generative concept of Mike Cloud's (M)ildly toxic, (F)ast drying speed, (B)rittle film, 2008, is the properties of oil paint used to produce the painting. Rendered as partially intersecting, circular charts, a visual metaphor emerges for how the interlocking of systems creates interferences and partial breakdowns. Though not entirely unfamiliar, a reinvested and thus reinvigorated symbol emerges out of Cloud's chosen parameters and process.

Mehran Mohajer (b. 1964) lives and works in Tehran. Widely exhibited in Iran and within an Iranian context internationally, Mohajer lectures at the University in Tehran, and is also a translator as well as author. Pushing the boundaries of the visible towards the invisible, he locates his photography at the intersection of language and the image, with an eye focused on Persian classical literature.