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Work On Paper

 

While the main focus of the drawings is space, the rhythmic repetition of some shapes forms a pattern, playing tricks with the surface of the paper, giving it depth while bringing it forward. The surface suggests a reflection of something that might be behind the viewer, thus creating an illusion of space. I am thinking of the paintings of Diego Velásquez, for instance, which incorporate the reflection of the painter himself and beyond. 

These works play with several dimensions, as the perspective is complicated by the overlays of several other views—much like the effect of multiple exposures. At first glance they look like photographs, but they have nothing to do with photographs. They don't even have anything to do with reality. Rather, I create impossible landscapes that defy reality.  The photographic resemblance of the painting suspends it between reality and imagination, rendering it curiously unstable. The work is deceptive in that way. Again, they are mainly landscapes in transitional states of construction and destruction, where gravity is challenged. Upon closer examination, the photographic clarity, the precision and the correspondence to what seems to be a familiar place dissolves and the drawing becomes foreign, abstract, and at odds with reality.

The sharpness of the work on mylar complements the accidental nature of the rust paintings. Painting with rust is a lengthy process. If my paintings on canvas take a whole season to produce, the work on paper is a much faster process, immediate and irrevocable, due to the nature of the material. It is like working within the future and the present tense simultaneously.