Maps of Being is the framework that holds Gelhasan’s painting practice together. It is not a single body of work, but an ongoing exploration—a lifelong system of documenting internal states through painting.
The idea of mapping is central. These works are not about representing reality as it appears on the surface, but about charting the terrain of consciousness: memory, mood, thought, emotion, instinct, subconscious impulse. Each painting becomes a kind of mental topography—a visual map of lived, felt, and remembered experience.
Maps of Being is not concerned with resolution or clarity. It deals with the fragments, the layers, the things that shift and morph below verbal language. The focus is on process over product: painting as an act of recording, revealing, and staying present with uncertainty.
Some works emerge from the subconscious directly, through automatic gestures and free association. Others attempt to capture the residue of emotional states, moments that pass through the body and leave marks behind. And some approach the internal landscape by way of abstraction, creating spaces where memory and perception blur together.
By painting these inner movements, Gelhasan creates a visual archive of being; in flux, in contradiction, in reflection. The viewer is not asked to solve these maps or decode their meaning. Instead, they are invited to enter, feel, and perhaps notice their own interior shifts.
Maps of Being is a practice of witnessing. Witnessing what it feels like to be alive, moment to moment, thought to thought.
