Blue Swells
2019—ongoing
Blue Swells is a new body of work-in-progress that I originally developed on a residency at MASS MoCA in 2019. I continue to blend photographic, drawing and painting techniques to dramatize the processes and materials of photography and divert their use away from the pictorial toward propositions at the thresholds of legibility and meaning. The works consist of multiple variations on a shape defined by concave and convex lines connecting corners and middles of joined sheets of photographic paper. In the first instance, the shapes are rendered in cyanotype over silver gelatin until both emulsions are exhausted – a blunt, digital-like ‘ones-and-zeroes’ treatment of the medium. The undulating rhythm positions the resultant forms at the junction of image, language and notation as they begin to resemble a kind of cuneiform writing protosystem; a store of meaning without a clear key. The archaeological connotations are further emphasized by the shapes resembling images or X-rays of bone fragments, tools or other artefacts.
Exhibition history:
SALON/19
Photofusion, London
December 5, 2019 - January 11, 2020
Open Studios
The Studios at MASS MoCA
March 30, 2019