I took this sculpture (Portland Stone, 2019) and covered it in 120gsm paper, placed horizontal on a table. I took a pencil and started to draw lines by pulling the pencil down along the paper parallel to its longest top edge.

The pencil began to encounter the contours beneath it in an interesting way like a Deleuzian palpation of reality. I found myself making up rules as I went along

the lines must respond to the material beneath

the lines must respond to each other where no other influences were at work, that is they should run alongside the previous line

the force on the direction of the pencil must tend to the downward, or toward, in a sort of insistent pulling

when the pencil encounters an insurmountable object with the above force applied, it should be allowed to follow another path, but always with a tendency towards pulling downwards

when the pencil broke, which it often did, the line had to be continued from where it broke

when the pencil encountered an obstacle out of which no path could be found when all the above rules were applied then that was the end of that line

when the pencil is thrown out of an underlying influence it must return to the nearest previous line

and so on…

occasionally I would break the rules depending on my mood and attitude, just as  the pencil would behave differently depending on its sharpness or bluntness

A dance between intentionality and what lays beneath. All my stupid rules. My linearity.

Its already drawn. I just manifest it. Facilitate it. Over and over again. Each line a life. Of the surface. Materialising. What is controlling this? Who or what is doing the drawing?

Meanwhile next door in the basement a spider weaves its web

                                 

Transmitting Data, 2020

 

This shape was presented to me in a dream and I therefore take it to be a symbol of something that the Unconscious is using to communicate with my materiality.

I use compressed charcoal to try to materialise the dream. I do it in one gesture. The charcoal often snaps. I like that sensation of it snapping in mid-gesture and continuing on.

It may be an archetypal symbol of something like the creative impulse or of the destructive impulse.

It may be a symbol of a thing that is presented in dream.

It may be a symbol that denotes those objects that are members of the set of objects that are outside of all sets of objects that are in a set.

It may be a symbol that denotes those objects that are members of the set of objects that are outside of all sets of objects that are in a set because a subject is conscious of that being the case.

It may be a symbol that denotes an object that belongs to the set that contains all symbols that denote symbols.

Etc.

I am not sure which of these drawings, if any, are an accurate representation of the dream symbol. I am not sure that matters. I play with the idea of being driven mad by trying to reproduce the perfect representation in a sort of Borgean trap.

I see a woman on her knees. Head on the ground. Getting up, bowing down, genuflecting, stuck. Yogic. Defeated. Reviving. all of these. I see the white negative spaces like seeds and sperm, the black positives like ovum. I see toppled question marks. Neolithic tombs, igloos, tunnels, labyrinths, entrances, exits.

I see u-bends. Neat, curly heaps of turd.

But thats not how symbols work. They don’t represent. They exist in their own right.

They are not just a thing, or even a bridge, from the unknown to be translated into language. To become known.

They should be allowed to be, without interpretation or justification.