Fire Painting is a cybernetic construction. It is composed of a set of 16 pumps creating pressure and pushing a lavish green kerosene mixture through the nozzles when the valves are opened. The kerosene is sparked to combustion creating a formidable, brilliant flame. The combustion is controlled by subtle movements of the sensor glove worn by the artist/participant/viewer. One is literarily playing with fire. The idea is built on the paradox of the actually tactile handling of this primal element, using it like colour on a canvas, like an action painter. The participant controls the image yet it constantly eludes him or her. Fire is the ultimate intangible and unstable light-based medium, and therefore any digital or electronic image can be emulated in its light (screens, projectors, televisions). In fact, the 4x4 nozzles function like a 16 pixel image. Tiny gestures with the glove trigger forceful and unpredictable changes mesmerising one to a standstill and bringing one to complete rapture. Again the artist strives to capture the gaze, to catch the time of the moment. Furthermore, the entire construction is supported by completely translucent “bodiless” containers custom-made out of glass. Jahić radicalises the painting much further from a simple translation of time-based art into an analogue medium. She eliminates the carrier of the image entirely. The only carrier is the mathematical algorithm that translates sensor movements into opening of the valves and consequent combustion. She herself explains it as an interest in the possibilities of formalist questions of modernism in contemporary art; that of the vibration of colour and that of the frame of the painting, except that she adopts a much more mystical turn, using fire, which is visually intoxicating and hallucinatory. There is no more frame, no more edge, just endless folds of infinite becoming of the image.

Excerpt from the text “Sanela Jahić: Cerebral Values of Mechanical Beauty” by Ida Hiršenfelder, published in Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative (Publication Studio), 2011.