Isabella Séville Fürnkäs: Water Mirage
Isabella Séville Fürnkäs (*1988, Tokyo, Japan) is an artist who works in a variety of media. The body of work involves equal shares of multi-media installation, video, performance and drawing. In her multi-layered oeuvre she addresses questions of physical and spatial intimacy, the influence of digitalization on interpersonal relationships, and the transformation of social communication patterns.
Fürnkäs investigates visual spaces of our present and creates contextual shifts that echo our own vulnerabilities. In the context of her works, inner images and multi-layered questions are transformed into a repertoire of media-reflexive actions via performative, installative and time-based techniques.
Experimental by nature her works involve a subtle comparison of the individual and its society, creating situations of disruption and (re-) creation. By using a wide range of materials such as glass, epoxy-coated cloth, fluids, fabrics or pottery in combination with audio, video and performance, her works open up to potential mental spheres beyond the familiar, in the unexpected state of being in-between.
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2017-2014
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
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Isabella Séville FürnkäsInteriorities, 2025Mixed media on paper42 x 29,5 cm
The Desiring Machines (2025) consists of individual mouth-blown ruby-red glass drops filled with ethanol and inscribed with handwritten engraved words. Fürnkäs explores the physical interstices between human and machine, masculinity and femininity. Drawing on Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze, she incorporates quotations that address the fluid processes of the body, its circulation, and its needs. The mind of the viewer and listener itself becomes a vessel in which a fluid web of its own thoughts emerges. The floating, tranquil glass droplets appear to transform into fundamental human sensations, questioning their material nature. One thing is certain: we are not our feelings — they are merely a fragment of the infinite abundance of our consciousness.
Interiorities (2024–2025) is a series of mixed-media works on paper, executed in oil pastels. Fürnkäs’ drawing series Interiorities plays on a sense of suspension — the suspension of pigment in oil, the suspension of reality in favour of raw emotion. One after the other, formless figures tending towards abstraction cover sheets of brown paper. Hands, faces; gaping mouths, open wounds. Through pure gesturality and colour, the drawings somehow articulate a language of their own. Each drawing adds phonemes, words, punctuation — in this way constructing a broader cosmos of meaning. It’s a primal language, a mother tongue, the kind that isn’t learned on an intellectual level, but rather an emotional and intuitive one. The kind whose rules and grammar you can’t explain — you just, inexplicably, know.