ARTIST STATEMENT

Artist Statement – Shilowska Pretto Founder of Dimensionalism Artist Statement I do not create to represent the world. I create to investigate the conditions through which it is perceived. For more than three decades, my work has developed through a sustained exploration of perception, ambiguity, and the structures that shape human experience. The paintings were never conceived as illustrations of a philosophy. They came first. Only through years of observing both the work and the responses it elicited did it become clear that the paintings consistently invited a particular mode of perception, one in which recognition occurs before certainty, allowing perception itself to remain active. That observation gradually gave rise to Dimensionalism, a body of philosophical writing that emerged not as a theory imposed upon the paintings, but as an attempt to describe what they were already doing. My work does not seek to communicate predetermined meanings, nor does it conceal hidden messages waiting to be discovered. I am not asking the viewer to solve an image or arrive at a correct interpretation. The artwork remains intentionally open because the observer is not external to it. The encounter is the work. Each observer brings a unique perceptual history, and that history becomes an active participant in what unfolds. The painting does not deliver a fixed meaning; it creates the conditions for perception to continue reorganizing itself. As that encounter evolves, new relationships, configurations, and possibilities emerge, not because the painting changes, but because perception does. For this reason, I do not think of painting as the transmission of ideas from artist to viewer. I think of it as the creation of a perceptual field in which the artwork and the observer participate together. The observer is not asked to decode the work but to inhabit it. Meaning, if it arises, is not an endpoint to be reached. It remains provisional, capable of expanding, dissolving, and reorganizing through continued engagement. I am interested in the interval between recognition and certainty. It is within that space that perception remains most fully alive, where new relationships become visible, where previously unseen possibilities emerge, and where our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world remains capable of transformation. Rather than treating painting as a vehicle for representation, I approach it as an investigation into perception itself. The artwork is not an answer. It is the beginning of an inquiry. My practice unfolds across painting, philosophical writing, and the ongoing development of Dimensionalism. Together, they explore how delaying premature certainty may expand the information available to perception and open new ways of experiencing reality. I do not aspire to represent a particular identity, geography, or category within contemporary art. Those descriptions may be factually true, but they are not the foundation of my work. My commitment is to the investigation itself, to creating paintings and ideas that invite perception to remain open long enough for something genuinely new to emerge. I see my role as giving form to perceptual phenomena that often remain unnamed until they are encountered.