This exhibition featured a sofa, and four small, black boxes. The boxes were 50cm square, and 7cm high, made from MDF and pine struts, and painted in high gloss black enamel paint. They were hung at approx. 6foot high, and about 5cm apart. Directly opposite them, up against the wall, sat the sofa, which was covered in drop-sheet plastic, with a journal opened to a specific page. On that page was the following text:
“Be gentle with me”
1.44am, Monday, march 19th, 2001.I’ve been relying heavily on metaphor lately, and I usually despise that tendency in writing.. especially my own. The text gets too choppy, too flowery, too heavy, too laden with imagery apart from the topic at hand. The feeling, the core, the intention.
What’s bizarre about that (to me), is that my art practice is all about leaving the work open to interpretation away from the “artist’s intention” (whatever that is).. away from the answer to that mind-numbing question that artist’s hear from people who don’t want to (or can’t) think for themselves.
“But what does it all mean?”
Do I really see art and writing as being THAT different? We’re talking about polar opposites here.. In writing, I get to the point, express the hidden agenda, or the demon within. That nagging thought that won’t leave me alone, and drives me to action. I let people in to see me.. the real me.. and yet, in art.. I am always trying to get away.. never show too much of myself.. push people away..
My art is, in some ways, as personal as my writing, yet I treat them so differently, and, I expect different things from their respective audiences…
I don’t get it..
the statement i gave to the gallery for publicity was quite different.. it read as follows:
you are free to interpret this HOWEVER you want.
you make the image.
you make me.you could say all this comes from having nothing to say
quite possibly true. quite possibly wrong.the fact that i say nothing about it, says a lot.
i give you everything i have, and you are free to do whatever you want with it.
i rebuke my authority.
i render myself powerless.call it the void of my emotional being.
call it a nihilist statement about the image, or about ‘painting’.
call it a rebuttle on the ‘act’ of painting.i have the power to say i don’t care.
i have the power to tell you to “Insert Picture Here”.
