2003
Exhibition statement: Lozenge Paintings, Cornell DeWitt Gallery, New York, NY
I work towards a painting that convinces me of itself but that I don’t understand. Differences in color, form, compositional structure, materiality and pictorial space are sites of experimentation. Multiple pictorial spaces becoming together reflect a valuing of diversity, difference, and emergence. Evolutionary processes and forces are models for the process of making.
Pleasure in difference is a point.
Installation statement for MCA project @ Monaco Hotel/Denver
Ornament is the only visual art whose primary if not exclusive purpose is pleasure.
James Trilling, The Language of Ornament
In a gesture of conceptual transgression I am appropriating the degraded ornamental form of the frieze to amplify the aesthetic qualities of the room. Social information is embedded using height measurements manipulated by the divine proportion. The interaction of the existing striped wallpaper and the painted transparent patterned frieze, being from different structural systems, provide for a determinant indeterminacy, a combination of modern and pre-modern notions of ornamentation.
Exhibition statement for Stripes with Ryk Ektel
Systems and some notes on fidelity.
For this exhibition I use numerous systems to create limits in which to work. Various degrees of fidelity were maintained to each system.
Consistency of format, with dimensions defined by manufacturer of commercial cradled hardboard (monotheism and a inherited ideology (tradition) Absolute adherence.
Four types of lines: Taped, cut tape, hand painted, drip. All combinations from single to all four defined and assigned to each of 15 works., Absolute adherence. ( Defining beliefs, with literal faith)
Ittens color chords: Analogous, complimentary, triadic, and double compliment. Each work was assigned a palette. Assignment was a dialogue between inherent properties of color (e.g. primary triadic has to be blue, red, and yellow) and the necessities of equal distribution. (The complexity of layering an ideology (e.g.-equality) on a pre existing system (biological life).
Painting: A tradition
A spontaneous random processing. Loose and transgressive within narrow boundaries.
Stripes: A decorative motif and a historic reference to various late modern painters. An absolute.
Dynamic symmetry: Functions here as a transgressed system (recognition through rejection) personally a transgressed sublime.
Painting is analogous to living. I focus on systems and structure to examine formal qualities of social and individual interaction. Color and beauty function to seduce (the appearance of things). Structure and patterning, internal and external, are relational/social in nature (ideologies as systems for meaning making).
Also, they are beautiful objects for consumption.
2004
Notes on Color
Notes on color
Color is: momentary, seduction, sensation, emotion, felt reality, spectacle, elusive, intoxicating, and defiant.
I use color because I like it.
Using color
Color choices begin with an initial spontaneous choice (desire). Usually a color chord is then logically established. This logic is loosened through small incremental transgressions, (Using a red violet rather then a blue violet).
Secondary color structures are layered on top, often with some relationship to a color below, (A blue orange split compliment layered on a secondary triadic orange, violet, and green).
Careful attention is paid to value which necessitates looking past color. Value contrast is used to clarify, tension and effect is achieved through use of contrast of saturation.
In these paintings I consciously pushed shades and tints of shades.
This color thinking developed out of my attention to the dissolving edges of systems, (Blurred boundaries).
Thinking about Color
Thinking is abandoned at anytime for any reason.
In my painting, color is not specifically emotional but provides for feeling.
Color is difficult to talk about. Language structures thinking and color appeals to something else. Color defies logical structuring. Color systems help to clarify but also limit.
The hyper rational Nineteen-century distrusted color, which is revealed in an emphasizing of drawing over color, a view of color as mere effect. Modernism was born in an explosion of impressionistic color.
Color is social. A color is one thing alone, though will change from morning to evening. Add another color and both are changed. It’s a trick and yet real. The perception of color is heavily context-dependent.
Color is light. Different hues are individuated from an interaction with matter. Color disappears in the dark.
Being made of the most elemental parts (?) of the universe, light hardly exists. Its nature is changeable. It is literally ether one thing or another depending on whether it’s here or not there.
Statement
Using concepts from complexity, turbulence, and chaos theories, I have organized five bodies of work that exist in an iterative relationship.
Body one is ornamental and is tied to body two through symmetry of opposition. This second decorative body is open and exploratory in palette, motif, and structure. In contrast the ornamental is restricted to one palette, one motif, and a systemic organizing structure to develop a relationship between determinacy and indeterminacy. Through this split I am attempting to develop definitions of both.
Body three I loosely call the post literary drawings. Combining text and images, these are fast paced in execution. They involve sharp juxtapositions, momentary decisions, arbitrary composition, and multiple media. They are the least defined so most open.
Body four is the newest and therefore the least developed. This involves fabric glued to paneled surfaces then covered with multiple coats of gel medium. This work is envisioned to be used as a tool to analyses issues of culture and gender through textiles.
Body five is a secret.
The constellation of ideas embodied in these practices revolves around issues of artifice, ethics, morality, and the social.
2005
Exhibition Statement for Fill
I like smart work and short statements.
Ornament is the only visual art whose primary if not exclusive purpose is pleasure.
James Trilling, The Language of Ornament
2006
Exhibition statement for group show at Edge gallery
Everything is Abstract
Counter to an idea of a subtractive abstraction that works to reduce form I work from an additive idea of abstraction. Happening prior to the production of form, this abstraction is imminent in the forces and ideas that are brought together in the process of production, thus escaping the dead end of an ‘abstract/figurative’ binary opposition.
2007
Exhibition Statement: The plane Upon Which Events Happen
The means are the ends
Paintings, like everything else, are a multiplicity and are not reducible to any particular interpretation.
I utilized concepts from complexity theory, evolutionary biology, and the history of painting.
The Plane refers to the surface of the canvas, materialism, and a social surface. Each is considered analogous to the others.
These planes are understood as being emergent and relational in nature.
All share the same structure derived from an ornamental pattern. From this shared sameness I produced different spatial effects.
Abstraction was additive rather then subtractive.
Sensation was privileged over expression, as was specificity over generality.
Surface difference was a strong consideration.
Discontinuance became a method.
2008
Exhibition Statement: Knowing How to Not Know
My interest in these paintings is to make visual pleasure out of difference. Accident, capricious whim, cognition, willful intent, ideas, the history of painting, concepts and desire are used as forces of difference to drive a self-organizing morphogenetic process.
The present exhibition of paintings was chosen to map the territory that emerged from of the ecology of forces present in the current state of my painting practice.
Public Art Statement for proposal
My interest in this project comes from my research into ornamentation as a public art form.
Classical abstraction, as practiced in the 20th century, was understood as autonomous and psychologically private and emerged historically with the rejection of ornament in architecture.
The primary function for ornamentation is pleasure. It is the emphasis on pleasure as well as pattern that my work takes from the history and structure of ornamentation.
I use complex color relationships to seduce the gaze and multiple surface differences to reward extended observation.
Exhibition Statement for Denmi, Art Basel
Statement Part 1:
The canvas as a set of sensations & forces (historic & material).
My process is emergent.
I use transgression and taste as tools.
I disavow responsibility for any meanings.
This group included landscape.
Statement Part 2:
The appearance of randomness necessitates the search for an emerging order.
I am interested in the first 3 nanoseconds and the last 3 nanoseconds of the universe.
I am interested in multiple things interacting in multiple ways.
I am interested in the first encounter of cream and coffee.
I am interested in systems far from equilibrium.
I am interested in encountering difference.
I am interested in complexity.
I am interested in change.
I am interested in becoming.
I am interested in sensation.
I am interested in nested infinities.
I am interested in constructed paradox.
I am interested in extended engagement.
2009
Email Interivew
1. The work that is in the gallery space at Redline documents your process over the last year or so. How was that work produced, from a day-to-day perspective?
I work in the studio on average 20 to 25 hours a week depending on my teaching schedule. I often have from 2 to 10 pieces in development with numerous on hold (some for years). I work to have ideas rather then have ideas to work so simply working is much the point.
2. There are works in a variety of media, or similar materials are used on various substrates. In general, how does the idea relate to the medium and the material?
Medium is actually fairly limited to acrylic & fabric on canvas or paper with minor exceptions. This is both convenience and quasi intentful. I’m more concerned with sensation then expression so the material of the paper is important. I have a strategy for working that is continually in evolution that travels across supports.
3. At what point did you become interested in incorporating fabric, and why?
It came out of my interest in ornamentation as a critique of an inherited modernist narrative about abstraction. The research around it was part of assimilating various post-modern ideas. I would also say that it seems to be providing a way out of the dilemma’s of critique that I am not longer interested in.
Another answer is it faster then painting the pattern and I love pattern.
4. Gingham fabric conveys certain cultural connotations. What about that pattern appeals to you?
The gingham happened through my use of arbitrary processing, that is I found some in my sister’s trash. It’s apparently used in pattern drafting as it makes the fall of a garment visible. It is thin enough and the pattern is rigid enough that it works well for producing a distorted pattern which function as an analogy to ideas I have about being & becoming.
The familiarity is seductive and light hearted and I enjoy that it folds people in.
I have toyed with using pattern as cultural artifact some so I’m not unaware of it. I’m more interested in what seems to be the origins and its evolution. It seems to be a very early pattern probably starting as a simple stripe one direction then evolving to a stripe in two directions, a good example of a simple pattern emerging from a set of forces (in this case the technology of weaving) evolving towards greater complexity, not unlike DNA.
5. A majority of the canvases are 16 x 20, or 20 x 16. What drove the decision to focus on that format?
I’ve made a lot of small work so I have a history. Last year I saw a show of Thomas Nozkowski and Tomma Abts who both have worked with a small format for extended lengths of time. I found the modestness and restraint very compelling.
I used cheap premade canvases as I wanted to work fast without much intent except to made work and to use difference as a tool so I accepted the standardization. I tried the size larger but found the compacted space of the smaller one more comfortable.
6. The erotic collages are a pretty distinct departure from the other works on paper and canvases, in terms of media, content and specificity. At what point did they manifest and how do they relate to the other work, if at all?
I started using gay porn in graduate school. That program was very steeped in feminist theory. At first it was way of insisting on my desire within what felt like a very heterosexual environment based on/in gender tensions. It wasn’t a disagreement with the theory but it felt like my desire was irrelevant to the conversation. Producing them seemed to make my desire present and thus complicating the conversation.
It also provides for another thing I’m interested in, pleasure. It’s part of the things in the world that I like looking at.
7. When looking at the work in the gallery as a whole, do you differentiate between more or less complete, more or less valuable, or is it about illustrating a continuity of output?
I ‘called’ the ‘show’ “Everything I produce this year, finished or not, with some minor exceptions” so I do have a line of finished or not. However I did find some work I thought was unfinished was finished as well as the reverse.
The question of weather something is finished is/ has been a very central question to me. Finished has to do with being convincing and the visual question is how to make something that looks convincing, particularly over time. My approach has been to produce complexity through the use of difference. I have played this year with the thin edge both in terms of amount of difference and subtlety of difference.
8. Why did you choose to display the work in a fairly casual format? How public and/or private is the show intended to be? Is it a "show," per se?
It is a show in that it was to show off the work. It was not an exhibition in terms of a formal event.
I wanted to see what I had done and I also had in mind a few others I thought might be interested. I make a lot of work but what gets shown is a limited selection.
Having access to the space at Redline gave me the opportunity to show it all.
There is a small bit of an organizing impulse I followed but didn’t really care about the presentation I just wanted to get it up and be done so I worked fast.
I was also feeling resentful and belligerently at the time caring in a negative sense might be considered a design strategy.
9. Once you put everything up on the wall, what went through your mind?
If volume counts I win…?
I noticed some color issues I’ll be addressing.
I remembered the initial impulse towards difference.
I felt exposed and had anxiety about showing something I thought unfinished.
The work is stronger (or more visible) in the context of the body of work then in individual works. Not sure if this is a weakness or not but it is clearly true.
10. Has observing your work as a continuum in any way determined where you are heading next?
I’m always thinking I should be more directed and intentful while continually wandering away. I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that while I’ve had a lot of thoughts about where to go next I doubt that I’ll get there though I trust I’ll get somewhere.
Intentfulness and the arbitrary are tensions in my process. While I’m very concerned with the finished object I’m not very interested that what is present at the finish matches some imagined image. It’s a practice of seeing what is rather then what is thought to be. I don’t know that it’s true but I think it’s a valuable practice to develop.
Reworked statement:
The appearance of randomness necessitates the search for an emerging ordering.
I am interested in the first 3 and the last 3 nanoseconds of the universe.
I am interested in multiple things interacting in multiple ways.
I am interested in the encounter of cream and coffee.
I am interested in systems far from equilibrium.
I am interested in encountering difference.
I am interested in complexity.
I am interested in change.
I am interested in sensation.
I am interested in becoming.
I am interested in nested infinities.
I am interested in constructed paradox.
I am interested in extended engagement.
2011
Exhibition Statement: I Am a Cloud
I Am a Cloud
Grids are determinant
Clouds are indeterminate
Grids are static
Clouds are change
Grids define
Clouds move
Grids are
Clouds become
This body of work, done over the past two years, is a move towards picture making. Spatial contradiction and ambiguity are present to give an experience of indeterminacy. Landscape is more explicit reflecting the use of stream patterns, stratigraphy, perspective, gravity and the space of color. My previous interests in pattern, ornamentation, surface difference, emergence and pleasure remain useful.
2012
To perceive means to immobilize... we seize, in the act of perception, something that outruns perception itself.
Henri Bergson
Artist statement: Purity is Death/Difference is Survival
If the space of a painting can embody a conceptual space my work looks to produce a taste for the paradoxes and contradictions imminent in the complexities of difference. A strong focus on process reflects a concern with becoming rather being. Multiplicity is sought through inconsistent, paradoxical, and contingent spaces both within a single work and across bodies of work.
Tags:
art
transcendental materialism
curatorial accessories
evolutionary systems
arbitrary processing
modernist painting
post conceptual
ornamentation
nonlinearity
conviviality
emergence
sensations
patterning
difference
de Landa
gingham
painting
pleasure
deleuze
process
surface
support
humor
color
Statement:
Auto Catalytic loops are a repeating gatherings in which things become more then the sum of their parts.
Auto-catalytic systems are looped gatherings.
Gathering loops and relational fields
Paintings
Actual Space
Virtual space
Networks
Gravitation
Cultures
Institutions
Societies
Pedagogies
Science
Sciences
Organizations
Arts
Consciousness
Biology
Cells
Ecosystems
Nero networks
Homeostatic systems
DNA
Evolution
Physics
Atoms
Planets
Solar systems
Galaxies
Universes
Social
Marriages
Sex
Friendship
Enemies
Emotions as linkage