The realization that your mind is not your own, but rather the forced amalgamation of your body bearing witness of the world revolving, is a hard pill to swallow for most. Our perception of the real word is a firing of synapses that transmit what our bodies interpret into the thoughts we perceive. This reality is beyond our own control, to the point where even our memories become complacent of the fused past we experience, even indirectly. The misremembering and false thoughts our mind conjures reacts on the same level as the aspects of others lives we can relive as though they are our own. A Grafted Mind is a realized portrayal of the facets that the stitched-together thoughts and memories form by German artist Dominik Schmitt. An acceptance of all thoughts, positive or negative, allows for the conjuration of visages that Schmitt portrays in his collage paintings, the visual recollection becoming equally as composited as the thoughts being retold. 

In the evolution of Schmitt’s work, the influences of pervasive thoughts surrounding his life inform the sometimes grotesque figurature that occupy his compositions. Be they reflections of his current environment, in the way Donald Dumb clearly evokes his visceral response to American politics, or a breakdown of a single form in eliptical works such as To Poke Around and Smiley, his insticual reactions construct the newly autonomous intentions of the work.  The grafting of such varied thoughts and experiences together create a new memory, unique from all the individual elements that form it; separated from all implications, neutral to itself and all its surroundings. Schmitt’s Frankenstein-esque memory becomes an inheritance of the real and unreal progression leading to it, now free to chart its own history.