I have these two objects in my studio, the have been there for a while. One of them exists already, the other has been floating around in my brain for quite some time - as the mind is also a studio. Both were developed at moments of indecision, with no concise use as of yet, except for the plain fact that they symbolize moments of thinking. These two forms are problems. And for Bureau des Realites I’ve brought the problems to work. Let them hang out in the office and see if the develop into something more telling. The two problems function as hosts for speculation. Each delivering in its own way. One is obsessed with the contour, this is the hippy. A thin shape of wood is mounted upright on a metal armature. The surface of the wood is painted with a black and white illustration of a reclining nude hippy. The contour of the shape is the pattern die for series of paper skins that were cut out, folded, and then photographed. You can see these around the space. The other is all interior, this is the envelope. A rectangular form with a slim open cavity where sheets of paper can be stored. An envelope per-se, framing a place for thoughts to slip inside. The size of this form is used to develop a stationary letterhead scaled to the interior of the envelope. Each borrows from the aesthetics of administration to develop gestures. Using object-forms as origin points to generate other forms. Like two characters throwing ideas into a conversation. A problem is an issue, as in, a topic to address and talk about. The interior issues of each, the internal logic of a self-conscious void, are given space and a moment to project in a formed series of exterior statements. These two forms are hosts for speculation. Each deliver in their own way, a certain version of content. Two forms that are a problem, they exist as problems, you could even call them the un-confirmed. The particular language of each, the way they talk, has yet to develop in to that of a tool. The problem status of each is a space that can be approached with thinking. The object space created by the physical proportions of each, the reclining hippy cut-out and the wooden sleeve envelope, are manageable because of their relationship to the human scale. There is something familiar about the problem, and because of this familiarity, it can be approached with less anxious assumptions about end-goals. The idea was to make these two things talk. And hopefully the language they speak is either one I can learn, or, perhaps have the skills already in place to understand what is being said. A little something can always be picked up, we just need a bit, a unit, a little something to get going with the thinking.
If something is made out of wood I could imagine a person could relate that form to being processed, that it was once a tree in the forest, alive and growing. A wooden cut out of a reclining hippy, a thin box with two paintings and a snake around its edge, was once alive in a forest. an economy ripped it down and cut it up. Another economy, a paper mill, boiled it down, pressing the body into thin units sized for different tasks. The envelope has a stack of paper cut to fit its interior. this was done specifically for it, a stationary for the rainbow snake box. When making a new paper size, this is in a way, making a new task. A new place where two forms meet. The organic and the other organic, the tree and the human. Both arrive with different points of language, they commune through the page. I’m not nature by any means, that is I cant proclaim to speak for it, although I’m not sure I should speak for the human side either. I belong there, so I can say at least a little something. Everyone should say a little something. The surface of the paper is a membrane that records most anything that meets with it. The sheets of paper contained within the envelope have been met from above and below. The meeting was recorded with crayon and with ink. Technically this would make each page a negotiation. A meeting place for two languages to sit and hang out within one-another. Nature’s stand in for this conversation is a frottaged sample of my kitchen counter top. Something happened to this counter top a while ago before I met it, before i moved in, causing the surface to bubble and fissure. A surface of texture that looks very organic. In this case I would use the word organic to mean that which I don’t understand, know the origin of, but can appreciate and use its aesthetic presence to further a thought. IN other words the surface pattern of that counter top, as its frottaged, as in meaning recorded on to the piece of paper by rubbing a crayon over it, a rubbing basically, is a representative of a kind of language that I can think about knowing, but never will be able to. The other side of this conversation is a series of ink stamps that I made myself. A stripe, a dot, a zig-zag, and a curve. These four graphic elements are shapes that I’ve used previously as stand-ins for a subject, a gesture, a conversation, and a deviation. A dot, stripe, zig-zag, and curve. All words now used as forms that work to visually describe a way of communicating by translating thoughts about a subject into a form that works to speak for that subject. for example, if i were to think about a snake, I really have two options to communicate it without speaking. I can write the word using an alphabet pre-ordained and familiar to others, or i can draw it and hope the way I’ve rendered this creature recognizable enough to someone else can understand what I am doing. the dot of the pen traces a stripe to make a curving shape with the pattern of a zig-zag, telling us what that creature is. A snake. A representation of a snake, it's not real, it’s just a drawing, an illustration of an organism abbreviated for the purpose of communication. Since the stationery made for the envelope is a blank field that has a sized relationship to a certain place of conversation reserved for it, within the space of this conversation, i thought about including guest thoughts within the envelopes interior. The parts of a pineapple for example. That fruit really is quite strange. Enigmatic enough to encourage artisans to carve it in marble, as totems greeting visitors when they enter the palaces of Rome, for example. This group of visitors could be the gang, a community that comes along with an idea, with the gesture, the stripe to the dot’s presence. This is a space where illustration serves the purpose of giving a localized representation of that visiting influence. The thought is able to take on form through this administrative device.
To quickly address the context of the stripe and the dot, and at the same time the zig-zag and the curve, I should state that each work within that realm, every idea, carries the weight of presenting a negotiation of that thematic. This is an obvious statement as most any work would logically follow this rule as well. It’s good to present something. Yet its worth stating because at times the examples can be quite abstract, in a visual sense. Where idea wise, or concept wise, a similar approach is developed across the spectrum. The spectrum of difference is what is important, difference is very important. The approach breaks down ways of delivering information. The delivery of information is called a narrative. Here within my world, narrative is an organic living entity. Histories are characters to interact with. They make intersections through the work, while in the process commenting on the occurrence of growth and the generative process happening with the making of an idea. Ultimately this boils down to the construction of lateral spaces for the ideas to flourish within. the work makes a space for a certain kind of thought to hang out in. Ever been to a favourite bar? Might be your favourite bar for a reason. So then we talk about the building. To build a site where thoughts about a subject can be understood within broader terms, within a location. Issues of abstraction take on the job of building a language with every work that is made. As a strategy for communication, familiar forms are deployed in a language way. The short cut to this is that if you know what you are looking at, abstraction happens a lot easier and faster. Getting to the difference that much quicker. And thats the good part. No ones here to tell you what you already know, hopefully.
It’s time to talk about voids.
This would be helpful for relating to how outlines of the hippy, and the interior of the envelope, are serving as places for thinking. A problem, the physical shape of a problem, could be a void - a space. Maybe like a little piece of silence right now.
A drawing recording the moment of intersection and lostness is used to shrink the void into an area scaled into a more intimate and relatable occupation. The not-knowing is a line to cut with. An interior is created, a piece of geography, a piece of land, is made to host these thoughts: a thought form. The hippy and the envelope, these are each individual geographies for ideas to sit inside. Thinking is growing. This oblique statement is a way of understanding formulation, the making of something. Taking an idea or a subject as the start point for a process that is ultimately concerned with the making of facts permeable. Poke through the surface of that representative to see what is under and above. What flows through, what does not flow through.
Now would be a good time for another song. Maybe a song can describe the formulation of growth into gesture. Musical notes are a language deployed again and again to tell stories. Thats an easy metaphor that can draw a short line connecting something from the 18th century to something that is now. No one living person has ever heard a song from the 18th century, although they have heard a recital of those words, those notes. Something like reading a passage from someone else’s book, you just know their edit. Not necessarily the thoughts that went into it, or what happened around it, at that time. The hippy, a person of the late 60’s attributed to a certain set of beliefs that manifested themselves into actions, and appearance, to separate themselves from the dominant and major population and ideology at that time. Thats one definition of a hippy and maybe the one that we’ll use right now. Tune in, drop out was the hippy maxim. It didn't take long for this to permutate to straight up “tuned out”. Tuned out in the sense where the extremism practiced by the group ultimately became exclusionary to changing principles and coherent applications that a sympathetic, or sensitive population, could actively relate to and use. Dropping out of the conversation, ultimately had negative side effects. As the beliefs within the hippy group were seen as out of step with the activism that developed an emerged from this life aesthetic. As a result the hippy became a term, a form, a reference of slang, that is a great abbreviation for an idea that is out of step with a more factual and real look and approach to life. To dealing with the daily bits and pieces. That idea is a little hippy. The shape of the skin form gives avenues or areas of opportunity for suggestive content to be located within. The overall form is sensitized to suggestions for its interior. The outline of the form creating a territory for the placement of ideas to roam around within. One form within another, it’s like giving an idea within a blank space. The hippy skin becomes slang capable of multiple meanings. The folding of this form is an attempt at negotiating this form. A naked reclining hippy cut from a sheet of paper and folded, turned, manipulated into an alphabet of gestures. Making a character word. The image of that character word takes on gestures that transform its presence into other compositions. Like I mentioned before, it’s the other compositions that are of interest here. The image of the naked hippy with a big dick came out of a moment of intense not knowing. To be autobiographical, the drawing was the result of a days worth of thinking in a very remote area with nothing around me except intense nature. This was on an island, a barely inhabitable island, like a living metaphor of the inside of one’s head. The mind at cramped rest. Oddly enough, this one physical void gave form and illustrative abbreviation to another void: the naked hippy. He became the stand in for that moment of not knowing. Making him life size, making him exist is a way to use that void moment to generate, to make something with, to make something out of it. Putting the void to work by bringing him to the office.
Let’s talk about the envelope now.
An index of painted colour moving into an abstracted composition, thats the one side, and then the other side. The black and white monochrome operating within a photographic context. This is just an idea, maybe it’s not a right idea. A reference to the document, what we could call reality, or factual language of photography. A composition after photography. Less that I made this composition, more that it is there now. That’s one way of approaching the rainbow pattern on one side, and then the black and white goopy composition on the other. They are just kind of “there”, and now we deal with it after the fact. Because they are facts, they exist. The pattern on the paper is an impression taken from a surface, the physical membrane that represents a negotiation and a translation from solid to air, formed to unformed. The stamp communicates by turning a liquid into a solid. An impression on a surface. The abstract nature of the stamp form directs and retains the conversation within a zone of phenomenology, abstraction, and discursive approaches to language and its formation. As opposed to a direct allegorical reference to an outside influence, subject, or reference. This is a dialogue of interiors as established by the works in the room. Is the table-top solid? Or is the air solid? Like coming out of the ocean, everything looks boring afterwards. What if where you are, and how you read things, is wrong? We’ve just become used to it. The ocean made me think this. So does the counter have the pattern? Or does the air have the pattern? For a frottaged surface, the aleatory, which is a random yet controlled intersection of two surfaces recorded with a pigment, a field of organicism directed into units of language. The action of building a language of presentness, it can’t be done if you’re not there. Added to this are universal bits of language. The dot, the stripe, the zig-zag, and the curve. Like Calder’s use of forms to build a language in transit, moving in the air. Each of these pages could be a film still, the surface of the page is the meeting point of two surfaces: from above and below. A field of pattern taken from a counter top, a place I look at every day in order to make food to keep me alive. To feed my brain, so thoughts can come out. And then we have the stamps. The units of language versioned as abstract shapes, choreographed on a page to make statements. Surrogate thought shapes hitting the page. Kind of like a slice of conversation. I’ll describe a diagram of this. Take light, plus object, plus person. This also equates to that which is, that which is there, and that which is made. And then to put it one final way, so we have out third, nature, plus tool, plus subjectivity. Memory as a slightly out of step surface, a blurry place to find ourselves thinking within. Where thoughts turn into forms.
This has been the reclining hippy and the envelope.
Take care.
If something is made out of wood I could imagine a person could relate that form to being processed, that it was once a tree in the forest, alive and growing. A wooden cut out of a reclining hippy, a thin box with two paintings and a snake around its edge, was once alive in a forest. an economy ripped it down and cut it up. Another economy, a paper mill, boiled it down, pressing the body into thin units sized for different tasks. The envelope has a stack of paper cut to fit its interior. this was done specifically for it, a stationary for the rainbow snake box. When making a new paper size, this is in a way, making a new task. A new place where two forms meet. The organic and the other organic, the tree and the human. Both arrive with different points of language, they commune through the page. I’m not nature by any means, that is I cant proclaim to speak for it, although I’m not sure I should speak for the human side either. I belong there, so I can say at least a little something. Everyone should say a little something. The surface of the paper is a membrane that records most anything that meets with it. The sheets of paper contained within the envelope have been met from above and below. The meeting was recorded with crayon and with ink. Technically this would make each page a negotiation. A meeting place for two languages to sit and hang out within one-another. Nature’s stand in for this conversation is a frottaged sample of my kitchen counter top. Something happened to this counter top a while ago before I met it, before i moved in, causing the surface to bubble and fissure. A surface of texture that looks very organic. In this case I would use the word organic to mean that which I don’t understand, know the origin of, but can appreciate and use its aesthetic presence to further a thought. IN other words the surface pattern of that counter top, as its frottaged, as in meaning recorded on to the piece of paper by rubbing a crayon over it, a rubbing basically, is a representative of a kind of language that I can think about knowing, but never will be able to. The other side of this conversation is a series of ink stamps that I made myself. A stripe, a dot, a zig-zag, and a curve. These four graphic elements are shapes that I’ve used previously as stand-ins for a subject, a gesture, a conversation, and a deviation. A dot, stripe, zig-zag, and curve. All words now used as forms that work to visually describe a way of communicating by translating thoughts about a subject into a form that works to speak for that subject. for example, if i were to think about a snake, I really have two options to communicate it without speaking. I can write the word using an alphabet pre-ordained and familiar to others, or i can draw it and hope the way I’ve rendered this creature recognizable enough to someone else can understand what I am doing. the dot of the pen traces a stripe to make a curving shape with the pattern of a zig-zag, telling us what that creature is. A snake. A representation of a snake, it's not real, it’s just a drawing, an illustration of an organism abbreviated for the purpose of communication. Since the stationery made for the envelope is a blank field that has a sized relationship to a certain place of conversation reserved for it, within the space of this conversation, i thought about including guest thoughts within the envelopes interior. The parts of a pineapple for example. That fruit really is quite strange. Enigmatic enough to encourage artisans to carve it in marble, as totems greeting visitors when they enter the palaces of Rome, for example. This group of visitors could be the gang, a community that comes along with an idea, with the gesture, the stripe to the dot’s presence. This is a space where illustration serves the purpose of giving a localized representation of that visiting influence. The thought is able to take on form through this administrative device.
To quickly address the context of the stripe and the dot, and at the same time the zig-zag and the curve, I should state that each work within that realm, every idea, carries the weight of presenting a negotiation of that thematic. This is an obvious statement as most any work would logically follow this rule as well. It’s good to present something. Yet its worth stating because at times the examples can be quite abstract, in a visual sense. Where idea wise, or concept wise, a similar approach is developed across the spectrum. The spectrum of difference is what is important, difference is very important. The approach breaks down ways of delivering information. The delivery of information is called a narrative. Here within my world, narrative is an organic living entity. Histories are characters to interact with. They make intersections through the work, while in the process commenting on the occurrence of growth and the generative process happening with the making of an idea. Ultimately this boils down to the construction of lateral spaces for the ideas to flourish within. the work makes a space for a certain kind of thought to hang out in. Ever been to a favourite bar? Might be your favourite bar for a reason. So then we talk about the building. To build a site where thoughts about a subject can be understood within broader terms, within a location. Issues of abstraction take on the job of building a language with every work that is made. As a strategy for communication, familiar forms are deployed in a language way. The short cut to this is that if you know what you are looking at, abstraction happens a lot easier and faster. Getting to the difference that much quicker. And thats the good part. No ones here to tell you what you already know, hopefully.
It’s time to talk about voids.
This would be helpful for relating to how outlines of the hippy, and the interior of the envelope, are serving as places for thinking. A problem, the physical shape of a problem, could be a void - a space. Maybe like a little piece of silence right now.
A drawing recording the moment of intersection and lostness is used to shrink the void into an area scaled into a more intimate and relatable occupation. The not-knowing is a line to cut with. An interior is created, a piece of geography, a piece of land, is made to host these thoughts: a thought form. The hippy and the envelope, these are each individual geographies for ideas to sit inside. Thinking is growing. This oblique statement is a way of understanding formulation, the making of something. Taking an idea or a subject as the start point for a process that is ultimately concerned with the making of facts permeable. Poke through the surface of that representative to see what is under and above. What flows through, what does not flow through.
Now would be a good time for another song. Maybe a song can describe the formulation of growth into gesture. Musical notes are a language deployed again and again to tell stories. Thats an easy metaphor that can draw a short line connecting something from the 18th century to something that is now. No one living person has ever heard a song from the 18th century, although they have heard a recital of those words, those notes. Something like reading a passage from someone else’s book, you just know their edit. Not necessarily the thoughts that went into it, or what happened around it, at that time. The hippy, a person of the late 60’s attributed to a certain set of beliefs that manifested themselves into actions, and appearance, to separate themselves from the dominant and major population and ideology at that time. Thats one definition of a hippy and maybe the one that we’ll use right now. Tune in, drop out was the hippy maxim. It didn't take long for this to permutate to straight up “tuned out”. Tuned out in the sense where the extremism practiced by the group ultimately became exclusionary to changing principles and coherent applications that a sympathetic, or sensitive population, could actively relate to and use. Dropping out of the conversation, ultimately had negative side effects. As the beliefs within the hippy group were seen as out of step with the activism that developed an emerged from this life aesthetic. As a result the hippy became a term, a form, a reference of slang, that is a great abbreviation for an idea that is out of step with a more factual and real look and approach to life. To dealing with the daily bits and pieces. That idea is a little hippy. The shape of the skin form gives avenues or areas of opportunity for suggestive content to be located within. The overall form is sensitized to suggestions for its interior. The outline of the form creating a territory for the placement of ideas to roam around within. One form within another, it’s like giving an idea within a blank space. The hippy skin becomes slang capable of multiple meanings. The folding of this form is an attempt at negotiating this form. A naked reclining hippy cut from a sheet of paper and folded, turned, manipulated into an alphabet of gestures. Making a character word. The image of that character word takes on gestures that transform its presence into other compositions. Like I mentioned before, it’s the other compositions that are of interest here. The image of the naked hippy with a big dick came out of a moment of intense not knowing. To be autobiographical, the drawing was the result of a days worth of thinking in a very remote area with nothing around me except intense nature. This was on an island, a barely inhabitable island, like a living metaphor of the inside of one’s head. The mind at cramped rest. Oddly enough, this one physical void gave form and illustrative abbreviation to another void: the naked hippy. He became the stand in for that moment of not knowing. Making him life size, making him exist is a way to use that void moment to generate, to make something with, to make something out of it. Putting the void to work by bringing him to the office.
Let’s talk about the envelope now.
An index of painted colour moving into an abstracted composition, thats the one side, and then the other side. The black and white monochrome operating within a photographic context. This is just an idea, maybe it’s not a right idea. A reference to the document, what we could call reality, or factual language of photography. A composition after photography. Less that I made this composition, more that it is there now. That’s one way of approaching the rainbow pattern on one side, and then the black and white goopy composition on the other. They are just kind of “there”, and now we deal with it after the fact. Because they are facts, they exist. The pattern on the paper is an impression taken from a surface, the physical membrane that represents a negotiation and a translation from solid to air, formed to unformed. The stamp communicates by turning a liquid into a solid. An impression on a surface. The abstract nature of the stamp form directs and retains the conversation within a zone of phenomenology, abstraction, and discursive approaches to language and its formation. As opposed to a direct allegorical reference to an outside influence, subject, or reference. This is a dialogue of interiors as established by the works in the room. Is the table-top solid? Or is the air solid? Like coming out of the ocean, everything looks boring afterwards. What if where you are, and how you read things, is wrong? We’ve just become used to it. The ocean made me think this. So does the counter have the pattern? Or does the air have the pattern? For a frottaged surface, the aleatory, which is a random yet controlled intersection of two surfaces recorded with a pigment, a field of organicism directed into units of language. The action of building a language of presentness, it can’t be done if you’re not there. Added to this are universal bits of language. The dot, the stripe, the zig-zag, and the curve. Like Calder’s use of forms to build a language in transit, moving in the air. Each of these pages could be a film still, the surface of the page is the meeting point of two surfaces: from above and below. A field of pattern taken from a counter top, a place I look at every day in order to make food to keep me alive. To feed my brain, so thoughts can come out. And then we have the stamps. The units of language versioned as abstract shapes, choreographed on a page to make statements. Surrogate thought shapes hitting the page. Kind of like a slice of conversation. I’ll describe a diagram of this. Take light, plus object, plus person. This also equates to that which is, that which is there, and that which is made. And then to put it one final way, so we have out third, nature, plus tool, plus subjectivity. Memory as a slightly out of step surface, a blurry place to find ourselves thinking within. Where thoughts turn into forms.
This has been the reclining hippy and the envelope.
Take care.