In my studio practice I often work with materials over which I have limited control: poured plaster, drippy paint, poured industrial polyurethane – detaching myself from proscribed forms when working with more rigid materials such as wood and photography.

Historicity and practice: I have been interested in the idea of exploration (discovering remnants of meaning in abandoned factories, dumpsters and archeological sites) and the ambiguity of the fragmented objects therein. The double take on its displacement, and disruption of the reading of the sign. What I have not resolved is my interest in the historicity in objects. Perhaps this is a layer of meaning that contrasts with the objects “grayness” or indistinguishability from its surroundings. The object through a sense of projected memory/ anticipation or belief of memory – then stands out (even though it may seem to be a formless old piece of rag). The interest in historicity does play a role in my practice.

I am engaging in an experience of visual displacement. In being drawn into the reading of the object I feel I am being drawn into a vacuum – once I am there -  there is a brief moment of disenfranchisement. And each time I witness the object I may face the same experience of the object-as-conundrum.

The purpose of my research is to create a viable personal definition for the informe and its relationship to entropy. The definition will stem from my own experiences of the informe – my own “vision” of the informe as it relates to my work. The research process creates an important dialogue informing my studio practice. And similarly how my studio practice is a invaluable tool in how I subconsciously am interpreting the informe. My studio practice should lead the research in this respect as it leads (whether I can yet intellectualize it or not) the research interest.

Processes and procedures which consciously deny the aesthetic

As a visual artist one can create work that attempts to suspend the perception of the aesthetic – where in the process itself (painting, pouring, photographing, layering, breaking, pulverizing) disengages the reading of the object from aesthetic judgment. While I am sure that it is possible to obfuscate meaning I am unsure if it can be bottled and patented as a process. In the studio I engage in the process of making and by doing so I make mistakes which are either subliminal discourses between me and the material/ mark-making or they are true (if one can define true) utterances or evocations of the formless – where the sense of aesthetic is withdrawn: where the unplanned processes/ actions create something that is in part not in the control of the maker.

However by being involved in the act of affecting material I am most certainly in the process – and therein lies the conundrum.

Whether it is my own involvement in making a urethane drip painting or in imaging the process of Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown, Rome (1969) wherein I can imagine the performative act of dumping the formless granular and sticky tar and stones. Gravity and the consistency of the matter and the incline and fall are key factors here. They act as a transformative agent. We know it exists but we cannot imagine what will come out of it. While we can imagine what an egg would look like if dropped on a floor (an occurrence with which most of us are familiar). It may be difficult to imagine what the form would be when a truck full of asphalt dumps the contents over a cliff in Italy.

The unexpectedness of this (why is it being done in Italy, why would one dump road building material over an incline where a road could not be built) and the unforeseeable outcome (what would it look like to pour asphalt onto a steep incline, how would it run, what form would it take) all produces a moment that is disengaged from both our expectations and our experience.

In this way it eludes signs (language) and approaches the formless. But, to do it repeatedly becomes an act that is symbolic of the “unexpected act” and in many ways can become an art historical fetish of the event.