Since moving into my East Williamsburg studio in August, I have to-date completed nearly sixty speculative paintings. In art quantity output is not necessarily anything to brag about. It depends. Scarcity in the market can impact valuation. Quality of each artwork can be assessed objectively by an expert or subjectively by anyone. Good versus Bad is the binary of aesthetic judgment. I am confident that the pace of studio production at AFH Studio BK 4.0 is not only defensible, but predictable. Past experience shows that any prolonged absence from the studio in my case is followed by a period of massive artistic output. While I was writing my Ph.d BETA draft, I did not maintain a proper studio, and only painted - in "small," concentrated series - during breaks between books. Then, my application to Oxford/Ruskin (which was rejected) cost another six months' and thousands of simoleans. To understate, it is a tremendous relief to have a studio, and a beautiful one at that, and to be painting again!
At this point I am in discussions regarding potential presentation/exchange vehicles for these pieces. I hope to be able to share more details soon. The range of options is broadly diverse. The three shortlisted vehicles fundamentally belong to three divergent economies. Each projection model of the three vehicles suggests consequent evolutionary patterns for me and my work, and whichever associations I pursue. None of three intertwine. I'm trying to take my time deciding on one, given the stakes. Most NYC artists do not have the luxury of patience.
The completion of my doctoral thesis is a pretext to this art. The paintings are forming series that have progressive features, and the most prominent features of the painting sequence are Referential, Direct and Directional. I think of the array of paintings in the studio as intertwined representation, but never illustrative. The painting structures suggest layers of actions and undefined relativity.
Initially I considered refusing to name any of the new art, but decided to follow the given protocols as a matter of practicality, or as a tactical diversion. The first painting has a working title ("Network"), but I reserve the "right" to edit any title at a later date. The figurative series is currently titled "Weird/Wired Man." The textured abstractions are called "Topos." The set of small panels is titled "'GRID' [Bots, bugs, N-tities, Forms...] and/or 'MEDIA DREAMS.'" Collectively, the whole set is titled "I-M-mate-REALITY." The "SELFIE/USSIE" set of digitally manipulated mobile phone photos I presented in the CTC Creative Technologies course I took this past summer (New Media, New Forms) are - in my mind - integrated into the pre-presentation model for the exhibit I imagine emerging from the new painting set(s). The pattern paintings that I showed in "For Paris" last year also seem connected to the new work in some way, and may find their way into a future combinative array of new paintings, media work and a selection of relevant older work. One supposes it will depend on spatial considerations, curatorial preference and conceptual focus, etc.
The paintings are made with vinyl paints, mostly, with some adhesive vinyl and charcoal pencil/acrylic medium used on "'GRID'....'MEDIA DREAMS.'" The substrates are diverse. Some paintings (e.g., "Network") are painted on fresh canvases or panels. Some painting substrates are cover-ups of older work. The compositions - a perfunctory term here - are drawn from diverse 4D+ practices I have developed over three decades, plus those techniques that other artists and 1-4D practitioners have developed which I have found to be sufficiently applicable to the task at hand. As usual the technical craft hinges on routine and procedural experimentation, with a hefty dose of improvisation. I am enjoying toggling between appropriation or re-appropriation, and invention. As I work the metaphysical aspects of painting are coursing through my consciousness like a voice-over, without any requisite that the thinking follow any concept-to-object trajectory, devolve into subjective deconstruction or reductive critique. Certainly the influence of psychology writ large is herein moot by 4D+ Choice and neutralizing effects available to any anti-psych agent-artist today. The content is mechanical, as it were, and the overarching aesthetics are symbolic-representational. There are advantages and liabilities in this modality. Signage is not meaningful as such, in these paintings, but the signature is. The extent to which traditional methods fold into the infinite matrices of 4D+ events - imagine it as uncharted territory without limits - for the non-contingent object/artistic action is purely a question of time and energy, aside from the contemporary problems of pragmatism. Oh, and the relative "fact" of measurements for each painting. ...At one point I pondered non-rectilinear substrates, but why distract from what's really happening inside the lines, edges, borders, end-points, and so on?
The theoretical context of "I-M-mate-REALITY" is sourced from post-Internet analysis and media philosophy, some useful optical science and chemistry, and other intelligence. The execution itself is almost entirely analog. I have a laptop on hand for checking e-mail, and an overhead projector, which I have yet to turn on. The virtual expresses itself here post-facto, and I postponed that development as long as possible. I have reduced externalities and random inputs significantly, compared to previous AFH extended studio productions (e.g., AFHGC). The thinking is part of the seen art, floating within the generative flow processes whereby each painting "constructs itself," with my "help." I realize this description is pure metaphor. The appearance of the paintings can be rightly perceived as a snapshot of confluence, and also - simultaneously - evidence of the Thing itself, a construct with the quality of stasis. It's important to attach this notation to a consideration of "studio-time." Even if that concrete feature of the object is suspect, and can be said to be illusory, due to the time-element, in the seeing-moment, the painting is real-enough to be comparatively trustworthy, as a sense stimulant and conversation starter at minimum. The reality of each painting prefigures its existence as "idea," and this is an outright rejection of the Ideal as a pre-ordinant superimposition on the art-medium, as determined by Classical (philosophical/aesthetic/political) projections for art by non-artists. In the instance of "I-M-mate-REALITY," much more is involved, because the platform for the in-studio creative enterprise is both "free-style" and style-free. The platform allows for only internal determination. The foundation of this art is sound, big as History can be, but non-definitive, and withal the language floating around the art itself, not-literal. Nor is the art numerical beyond the commonest metrics.The "true" architecture of this art is complicated, what I call Woven-form. The movement of this art, in a 4D+ system, is convoluted. Color is immanent in this art, and its dynamic nature is multi-faceted with the systematic array. Which is to say, color in 4D systems is itself multi-dimensional, and color is itself a spectral phenomenon therein. One note I meant to include in this introduction to "I-M-mate-REALITY:" Stipulating the virtual, the Image as such is digital until such time that the person actually encounters the art. The rules of virtuality apply to the perceptual nature of the Image - any image - up to the moment that the art acquires the nature of shared presence with the viewer. Worth considering is the extent throughout the process of the role of the artist in facilitating the interaction between art and viewer(s), and participating in the derivative discourse among those sharing said experience with the art in all its potential modalities, and evaluating the variant qualities of art in its programmatic interactive state for engaging viewership. And so on.