GELASSENHEIT

LETTING THINGS BE

15 October - 25 November at Art Post Uki, 2026

Gelassenheit is a German word for calmness and composure. Over the centuries it has been taken up by different spiritual and philosophical traditions, each giving it its own meaning. But at its heart, it means letting go: releasing the need to control and conquer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this word, because the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Everything is increasingly seen in terms of usefulness, efficiency or resource. Nature, technology, even people themselves are treated as something to be accelerated, mastered or optimised. Gelassenheit offers another way of meeting the world: one that doesn’t need to master it or calculate it. We can simply let things be and I’ve been thinking a lot about it in this body of work.

For most of my art practice, control has been at the forefront. I spend hours composing a painting, positioning objects and staging the scene. A bird might be moved a few centimetres to the left, an orange turned slightly to the right. I check and recheck until the composition balances, or tells the story I want the audience to hear. Every choice serves a purpose I’ve decided in advance. Then I paint.

But with this collection, I embraced Gelassenheit and let go of the impulse to control the narrative or the composition.

I let things be.

I stopped arranging. I left objects scattered instead of composing them. I let my birds interact however they chose. I didn’t straighten, correct or rearrange anything. I painted what was there: crooked, empty or unbalanced.

It meant I had to solve each composition as I went, instead of before. You’ll notice flat, rectangular elements recurring through this series, doing the quiet compositional work that a carefully placed object would normally have done. Each painting became a kind of puzzle. The question was no longer “what should I put here?” but “how do I make sense of what’s already there?”

Letting go is its own kind of discipline. Choosing not to control something you’re fully capable of controlling takes strength and trust. Trust that a painting can still work without a predetermined outcome. Trust that what is there, in its own right and in its simple form, is enough.

Anne Smerdon