TRASH - CONTRADICTIONS IN OIL
TRASH Much to the disadvantage of painters the language required in the reading of a painting is intrinsic to seeing. Not to say everyone looks or reads the same, but that each is their own authority. The elitism postured on esoteric art is to ignore this fact and forget that truly great art is emancipatory to all humanity. These works are not simply a cathartic expression, or a self aggrandizing romanticism. They are a conscious production of values and ideas in the often unconscious language of painting. These are neither experiments into the avant-garde nor the pompous posturing of concept over aesthetic experience. Art in its weakest form reflects only itself, while at its strongest reflects a philosophy. The self absorbed existential angst must be turned on its head - the question is no longer "what gives life meaning?" but "what makes life meaningless?" This lack of meaning is a perpetual crack in the fabric of our reality, fracturing all our multifaceted perspectives, and defining spaces by the very absence in between them. The void manifests in many forms -physically politically, socially etc, but a gap is only rendered perceivable by its positive frame- as a zero stands only for the very void it encircles. A work about a void is undeniably about its frame and the forces that, in their orbit, define a gap. This orbiting around a void is also known as a drive. Drive is not a means to an end but an end in itself. The absence of meaning does not come with some great end, but is there all along. Thus the traumatic void of meaning is everywhere; it is the inescapable mortal fate, the brutality of nature, the savagery of systems of power. It is violence, death, and decay. It is monstrous, merciless, and mindless. It is the unfathomable gap, the impenetrable gaze. It is the space in between pages, pictures, and pixels, between outside and inside, between the stills of a film. It is the black hole of the iris, the aperture, the open wound. It is the ouroboros of capitalism eating its own tail and destroying its ...