Subject: Paintings That Cannot Exist
How I Make ImagesPaintings That Cannot Exist
I continue to make paintings, but I pour them into the trash soon after I make them. These paintings are very small, and they physically cannot exist past a brief time. They disperse, dissolve, dry or otherwise degrade visually. Their compelling colors, patterns and textures disappear naturally.
In reality as we know it, there is no way to contain the actual substrate of these paintings to hang them. This is because liquid, in the fully liquid state, cannot hang on a wall.
The sort of paintings that I do now are EVENTS, ... NOT OBJECTS. I suppose you could say that what I do is action painting in its purest sense. Without the continuous possibility of this action, there can be no painting. There can be IMAGES of events, however. There can be images of peak performances of events, thanks to photography. So, I have no choice but to use photography to capture peak moments of the events that are my paintings. Otherwise, there would be no proof of what I do.
It is a strange netherworld between two media where I operate now. Some people might say that I am no longer a painter. But I would argue that I absolutely depend on paint to produce my images. I absolutely depend on the positioning of pigments and their color relationships. What I do NOT depend on, however, is the DRYING or setting up of these pigments.
There is a basic profound insight here: painting, as we have known it, crucially depends on its primary substrate's drying. Also, there is a form of painting that does not depend on drying, which (before photography) was impossible to capture. I simply realize this fact and use it as the basis for evolving my style and extending the very definition of "painting".
I like where I am now as a "painter". I do not have to worry about storing or handling large artifacts that clutter the world. Maybe I seem crazy to dump expensive materials into the garbage. But is this really any crazier than consuming the resources required to make a traditional painting, only to have it sit for years with little use? ... essentially as a higher form of garbage?
Today I can capture an image of a painting's peak performance, then save it in a very small compact form as film. Then, if someone wants a larger artifact to hang on the wall, then I can provide one of high quality, based on this peak painting performance. Yes, film images accumulate too, but the spatial impact on Earth's square footage is less. If eventually I go totally digital, then this impact will be even far less.
Given the number of painters producing paintings today, I think that this sort of consciousness is extremely appropriate,... even if somewhat disturbing. It is a sort of art environmentalism in the real sense of the term, "environmentalism". Being endowed with creative ability does not mean that humans ALWAYS should use it unchecked. I think of painting control, as I think of birth control. I see painting overpopulation on a similar path as human overpopulation. I also see the same intense controversy surrounding either issue. Nonetheless, I cannot escape my current conclusions.
Eventually, all artists will face the unavoidable fact that Earth itself is the primary ground of art. Civilization itself is the primary artistic medium,... requiring primary attention to shape artistically, so that life may thrive in the greatest cooperative rhythms.
Fluidism Concepts
|
|
|
|
