Occupation | [A-]vocation
Swerving into the channel of Phase 3 of 4D VyNIL, I produced a number of transitional paintings, before finding a sweet spot for the new work. The latest paintings exhibit many novel applications of Dimensionist technique, some of which I have been refining for close to three decades. The re-appearance of techniques I deployed early in my artist evolution generated some surprise on my part. In my first years of dedicated studio training and practice, at Notre Dame, and later in New Mexico (at the Upper Canyon Studios, then Gypsy Alley studio, then in the Pecos studio I built around 1990), I struggled to integrate 2D and 3D methods into the approach that on intuitive, nominal levels I recognized to be 4D. By trial and error, I sought to improve the precision of brushwork. I tried to understand the fundamentals of representation, but was routinely disappointed by the results I achieved. At the time, I did not yet comprehend that my optical handicap would always prevent me from perceiving proper 3D. Almost from the outset, I developed workarounds for my failings. I adopted a catalog of stylization for expression, drawing first from available resources, such as illustrations and comics, and later from art historical documentation. The photograph became a vital facet of my artistic process. I rooted through thousands of images and archives for inspiration. I poured through piles of coffee table books. I took courses at University. I visited major and minor galleries and museums. I discussed my findings with artists and academics, administrators and dealers. Inexplicably, I soon possessed potent opinions about art, and particularly, my own 4D art, relative to art writ large. In fact I could be fanatical, headstrong, stubborn and worse in the aesthetic arena. I admit the positions I took could be off-putting. I realized later that many of my contentions were incorrect. Nonetheless, I am deeply grateful for the passion that drove me to devote my life to art.
In the Currents, Flow + Reproduction Series, I am finally able to install those youthful technical innovations into appropriate pictorial structures. Some examples include outlines and striping, directional signals created with patterns, formal gradations for propagating dimensional illusion (gravity, shadow, spatial depth) and so on. The vinyl paint is wonderful in its capacity to accentuate these particular techniques. The combined matte finish, unusual color chemistry, the pigment’s variable texture - actually due to inconsistencies jar-to-jar of the medium and mix - help push-pull effects, flatten the pictorial surface, diminish a worldly reading of the impressions recorded in the surface. I am routinely selecting challenging substrates on which to test the vinyl paint. After a few layers, I am responding to the variations in surface texture through combinations. The fundamentals - color, composition or placement, sequence - are deployed with little expectation of an obvious conclusion emerging. Happily, sometimes the solutions are relatively easy. Usually, crafty extensions and derivatives are necessary to obtain the completion that satisfies my protocol. Most of the paint applied to the latest CFR Series is done so with very small brushes. The edge integrity is key to success in modeling shapes that activate the movement within the rectangular borders of the painting. The formally tight design elements propel 4D movement that force the viewer to question the nature of the space into which he is peering.
The CFR Series suggests a continuum with all-over painting, and with the imaginary infinite plane and line. The complexity is vital for adapting impressionistic juxtapositions of hue. I use high-order mathematics as a reference, when explaining the procedures involved in placement of colors, overlapping of elements, the inference of codes in the constructs exhibited within the rectangular format. My 4D methodology is Free Style, like Muay Thai. I am not a Hegel adherent, starting with a concept that materializes as an object. I reject the Benjamin contention that all human expression is linguistic. The courtly admonishments of Taste are obsolete. My art is not propelled by religious connotations and orthodoxy or dogma. The natural world exists outside the image, and the art insists on its own nature, as a creation for and celebration of Nature, as such. The elimination of fatuous citations of artificial reality in its multitude of iterations does not separate the art in its immediacy from our shared experience. The art proposes a specific reality, one that draws from a vast virtual and actual library of content, contributed by a diverse constituency. The circle is an obvious example. The seed form, the leaf and others acknowledge the impulsivity of the eye in its role in interpretative operations. The cards I made for the Network Series identify and project an initial set of shapes for use in the 4D VyNIL paintings. The type and use of such sets is infinite, limited only by the resourcefulness of artists who choose to play or operate in a 4D framework. If the paintings themselves are more often than not complex, the proposition they put forth is not. The body of work maps an invitation to any and all to engage in the documented, mapped assignment.
I do not believe that the procedure outlined can be described as my invention, or any one artist’s. I see the affinity of art and science, in this respect. I adhere to a program for art that welcomes the advancement of the discipline. When I first took up painting at university with the serious intent of a person accepting a vocation, I experimented with many materials. The first brand of paints I adapted to my vision for painting was Liquitex (acrylics). Since then, I have tried many lines of commercial pigment, and have even used my own recipes, from time to time. In the CFR Series I can trace the new color-sense to the one I brought to the studio as a beginner. The continuity provides a modicum of confidence, stability and mystery, because the continuum situates painting in the contemporary. I don’t hear many artists and critics, much less academics, dealers or collectors, addressing the emergent time-based features of Dimensionist painting, despite the proliferation of excellent examples. To admit my frustration would be a concession to the mediocrity that consumes status quo art marketing, absent the principled establishment of mutually beneficial criteria for quality in art. The current conversation is not nearly as rewarding as the act of making qualified art, to be its own sustaining argument. A student of art writing will eventually notice that informed and informative critics are not common.
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #23
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 12"
$1450
The Vinyl on Vinyl Series operate in a separate zone from the paintings on rectangular substrates. First, these paintings are open for a kinetic presentation. Each one of them can be displayed vertically on a turntable. The format mobilizes the composition, simultaneously jamming the analog definition of the painting with electrical spin. The art is afforded the qualities of an object in motion. The image is static. A tension between the co-existent characteristics swivels the 4D aesthetic toward the discourse of the parallax view and concentricity. The optics of energetic infusion sustains the blur analysis for perception, pertinent to contemporary art on many levels, practical to theoretical to physical and beyond. The contingency of visual experience to the Machine (turntable) and external power source (wall socket), cord connected, evokes the ghost of Shannon. Further, the format (Vinyl on Vinyl on vertical motorized platform) is a cool metaphor for the computer, and for the Turing device, a sentient engine. The disc has over the past century emerged as a complex container for vast quantities (if that is the proper terminology) of human knowledge, ideas, expression. Flattening the human condition into a circular, groovy wafer has revolutionized the self-concept of our collective awareness, among other things. The fragility of information in the disc-medium is a fact that most Users of technology confront at some point. The crash or unintended erasure of a hard drive can devastate an archive, because so much data can be stored now on a single micro-facility. Memory, the back-up, are flip sides to a singular reality: our latest artificial constructs for storing consciousness are easily as precarious as their precursors. My V on V Series adds to the dynamic the conditions of artistic preservation, the memorial objective of the art enterprise. Further, V on V materializes the vision of Paul Valery, by provisioning an embodiment of his dreamy futuristic projection of sound-based environments for a new age.
4D Vinyl No. 14
Currents, Flow and Reproduction No. 21
Vinyl on 12" Vinyl Record
$975
The Topos Series plumbs the depths of materialist concessions to color, as an entrance into examination of the interstitial space or field that joins three- and four-dimensions. The value of selection, from an artist standpoint, is the demonstrative factor in these paintings. The Topos Series embraces both 2D art and sculpture, and invites both to occupy the same territory simultaneously. The texture here is the consequence of pressure, followed by release. The process is literally push-pull. The time element is articulated by the duration separating the commencement of each artwork and its completion, a period of years. The plastic medium that creates the form is throughout the period (beginning to end of production, including presentation) approached via additive applications. The various materials applied to the original surface generally are not commingled in a single piece. The water-based vehicle should not be receptive to the oil-based vehicle, especially when both are active. However, the idea that ultimately the paints I use are all oil derivatives, generates unorthodox solutions, and therefore unusual, but satisfactory results. Whether those positive outcomes are short- instead of long-term effective will be a question for the conservator, not myself. So far, so good. The demands of the practical may trump the archival, a nod to the contention that All Art Is Political, yes? Fundamentally, Topos Series is “about” attraction, the power of bonding, and the beautiful violence of directional division of the matched pair. Quite a few of the originals, which I named “Pixel Paintings” remain. A significant number were clipped from their stretchers for display in AFHGC installations, in the early phase of that project. The stretchers + canvas remnants were preserved in storage, until recently. I have yet to determine how those will be reintegrated into 4D VyNIL.
Topos Series 3, Number 4
Currents, Flow and Reproduction #25
Vinyl on Mixed Media on Wood
16" x 12"
$1400
This month, I’m launching production on a new series, titled “Nets, Meta-Element + Wovenform.” The substrates are museum board that the Sam Francis estate gifted me, during my stint at LA Packing, Crating & Transport. The initial layer consisted of woven forms, which show characteristics of the Rockpile Series, and elements from the Half-Moon Series. These simple black on white paintings were applied with a spontaneous, almost automatic hand. The application of paint is informed by much sketching in prelude. The format is a staple of my studio practice from the beginning. Two of my Ab-Ex heroes are Kline and Motherwell. I was waiting for the right project to use my lovely, ancient fan brush, and the “net” component happened to be that. Adding a Meta-Element to the composition was a mindful act, which required a lot of staring and pacing on the studio floor. I am very pleased with the first two completed N, M-E + WF paintings. The white PJM signature felt more formal on them, for some reason.
Then, an anomaly materializes, seemingly out of the blue. In painting practice, the appearance of a novel object in a progression or sequence can disrupt the logic of the body of work. On closer scrutiny, given adequate comprehension of the principles at play in the aesthetic orientation of the art and artist, the “New” Thing may reveal much about the solution to some technical problem of a specific object. It may suggest a response to an irregular set of immaterial parameters. It may propose a possible future or past production path. It may initiate a redirection, or an unexpected suspension of the maker’s creative mode. Or it may refer to an influence on the artist that did not sufficiently drive the engine of visualization previously. Whatever the cause, or perhaps because causation is a secondary consideration in art creation, the pronouncement represented by a shift in form, composition, design, colorization exposes the internal process that guides the hand and eye toward an effected outcome. The poetic nature of the visionary artist is located in the liberty the artist prospects and projects by manifesting a palpably different or divergent thing, a thing never before seen by anyone, a thing not reducible to any one, other thing. “Speculative” is a term that has lost luster through overuse in contemporary art speak. The potency of realism is seldom due to anyone’s speculation, and in art, is rarely sufficient to the task of applying meaning to a thing which is inherently meaningful, absent literal recursion or conversion.
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #29
Vinyl on Board
25" x 7"
$1950