almost something insider forum

Working directly on one of Flux's gallery walls- already rich in history- I will build up new layers of surface, essentially creating a wall painting. Drawing on the integrity of labor of those workers who paint over graffiti and who clean up gallery walls, I will paint over my work with that ubiquitous five gallon drum of white latex paint. My first painting becomes the underpainting once it has been white washed. The painting will be almost entirely erased. Almost. Surface tensions will remain.

[top paragraph quoted out of order repeats later in text --FG]

While I’m not particularly fond of Matt McCormick’s film “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,” I nonetheless continually refer to it for drawing attention to an aesthetic and conceptual phenomenon I have always found profoundly interesting. When a New York City employer is given a can of blue paint to paint over blue wall covered in graffiti, that color never matches. Additionally, where the paint rolling starts and stops on the walls is seemingly arbitrary. The result is abstract blocks of color that randomly assert themselves upon surfaces in need of reparation or cleansing. The contents that remain below the surface are unwanted. The employer is accidentally my contemporary in the game that is painting today (or could have been Rothko’s contemporary). This art is a prime example of the subtle world of interruptions, interventions, and accidents that play daily with my mind’s eye.

I have always been drawn to those blocks of color that only barely do not match. These surfaces are beautiful in their slightness and in their insistence. My own art has often attempted to mock the paintings my eye finds along the many brutish surfaces of New York. The formal qualities excite me (texture, color, line) as well as the history. Surfaces are layered, scraped away, re-covered, repainted, and re-hidden ever day. Pasts are subverted, but rarely in their entirety. A subtle narrative develops in the interaction of materials. Below the peeling ceiling of the subway tunnel is a delightful turquoise. Below the blue paint that almost matches its neighboring blue, is the marksmanship of a graffiti artist. The failure to entirely subvert these unwanted pasts is the “almost something.”

Similarly, in galleries and museums, surfaces are being used and reused, painted on and painted over to satisfy the changing needs of the space. With access to greater skill and labor, and with the aid of the ubiquitous white paint, history is more successfully erased. With washes of white and the spattering of joint compound, the surfaces are returned to acceptable newness.

The acts of both painting over graffiti and white-washing gallery walls as a way of obscuring surface pasts have political importance. I am attracted to the aesthetics and feel comfortable with them, but the politics exist in a realm I feel less certain about. Issues surrounding race and privilege come to mind. The gallery white as an assumed neutrality is also of interest to me. The amount of labor and cost put into these forms of erasure are daunting. There is an obvious surface tension.

The Flux Factory exists in between the pristine white-walled gallery world and the brutish qualities of New York City. It is both a gallery and the grunge of New York. It is also neither. It is not a factory, nor a warehouse, nor a living space and it is all of these things. Flux Factory in itself could be seen as the “almost something.” Cracks, half-assed sheet-rock jobs, miss-matched paint, peeling surfaces, and the like exist everywhere at Flux. Yet it somehow maintains white gallery walls.

I propose to work directly on one of Flux’s gallery walls- already rich in history- and build up new layers of surface. To put it simply, I want to make a painting. It would be traditional in that I will apply paint to a flat surface; but this painting will not be bound by the confines of the canvas’ edges. Like thousands upon thousands of painters who came before me, I will build up my surface with mixed materials, to make a wall painting. And drawing on the integrity of labor of the workers who paint over graffiti and who clean up gallery walls, I will paint over my work with that ubiquitous five gallon drum of white latex paint. My first painting becomes the underpainting once it has been white washed. The painting will be almost entirely erased. Almost. Surface tensions remain.

As with most of my paintings, texture is predominant. Old cans of oil paint are poured to make mounds. Forms and shapes are delineated with wax. Patterns occur. Texture is insistent enough to take on sculptural qualities on flat surfaces. The painting over with white is not a statement in minimalism, but one of maximalism. Any number of possibilities can and, most likely, will occur.

By the very nature of the materials I work with, the white paint will not suffice to eliminate this history. Something is bound to crack. White latex paint doesn’t sit well on wax. Color might creep its way through. Elements will unconsciously fight to be seen. I will be walking a tightrope of chaos and control. Much of what will occur will be unpredictable. This excites me immensely being an artist who finds concept/content through process. A delicate push/pull dialogue with materiality is at the center of all of my art making.

At first glance, I expect my wall to look like a gallery wall in some stage of renovation. It may take a particularly sensitive viewer to pick out ghost shapes and lines. It has the potential, despite cracking, peeling, and raised surfaces, to be overlooked altogether. With its aesthetic inspiration the imperfections of the gallery walls around it, the incongruities of the details of the building which houses it, and the walls of the city which surround and encapsulate us, this white-washed wall painting may very well be one more beautiful almost something to almost see and almost ignore.