My trouble of too-much-ness or the feeling of too-much-ness; and in equal measure, a not enough:
This perceived quality as yet, in art, writing—across all work/output, serves as convex mirror for the issue I have in my personal life which is the struggle to make an imprint at all, the struggle, either to incise self upon world-page, and in what vein, with which stories and faculties made operative, over-thinking—and/or to be okay with just being. Too many questions at once and a narrowing to one would cause…
There is an implication of short-circuiting. Of intentional self-sabotage, traps, but not trap-doors. And my teacher says, you are very good at these sleights-of-hand whereas I in turn say, but short-circuiting…isn’t that the condition of the world, and the need to imprint, isn’t that an obligation of those systems in which we partake, or as what we desist from, by choosing not to, confirmed via negation.
Moving out from the immediate and the private will. So fast. Too fast. Another sleight yet.
To focus:
The work is not conveying all the things. To convey all the things is considered too much. Yet the work is not enough “too much,” it is too much not enough it is not doing what I want it to nor are others discerning what I want to do so in the end it is as irresolute as ever.
My subject:
My subject is the connections we make between things. This happens first as a trace layer. It is the implication of the incisive mark upon…Pentimenti, that signpost I have employed elsewhere in my writing and returns again and again, is useful here as an indication of anticipated interconnectedness: expectations of building upon.
I really do believe that the very personal, very intimate practice of producing a mark, of making a gesture, of imagining within a field of space-time-production then induces outer effects, emanating and so the mark comes to play some larger role as trace of what culminated in…
Legibility or the capacity to understand this relational matrix, this movement between, becomes a subject due to the human preference for attachment (and in detachment, possible substitutes).
This is neither a new nor an old phenomenon, what is perhaps new or situationally trenchant is the need to contend with all, representationally, at once. Rather than gradually, in steps. A balance between strategy and unknowing. Gamification. A meet-the-world aspect was engaged with far greater aplomb by Mantegna, or miniaturists like Nainsukh. Incredulity and necessity in carving out for oneself the court painter position. Blah. My teacher saying I have too many questions, too many things I am attempting to address at once. Thus, always boxed into the register of the attempt. The "research".
Threefold. Why I do something for myself, what the historical or contextual implications are, and then what others receive or experience. I do believe that all these questions or trajectories are necessary to pursue and that they can elegantly align, in syncopation. Only it takes means, form, time.
For, such is the extent of, if not my ambition, at least a kind of purview. Or at least a thing to try.
I do feel behind. But not necessarily or only because of others. It is because I am always just behind myself.
It's not that we need more examples of Zoomer art stars. Or that I wish to be an art star.
What I wish is to have better, more expansive and sophisticated conversations on a consistent basis, which is what I assume are being had among those who are more adept at readily signifying their desire to be present in not this particular, but the, world. Dogwhistling in a melodic tune. Whereas I'm forever at fourteen percent opacity and fifty percent fill image, and does this have to change, or can this be understood as its own, special kind of dogwhistle. As another colleague puts it, accurately but in language I would not otherwise look to, I struggle with the ideological or identitarian commitments—i.e. the concentrated thematics—that are needed to, not only attain visibility in these efforts but to convey anything at all. Because to convey comes with dissatisfactions. The dissatisfaction with the suggestion of a wholeness. Aren't we schooled past an awareness of lacunae by now. The lacunae becoming applique, becoming print; it's an anniversary year for Marimekko.
(That line delivered as a sincere cross-metaphor. To be read adamantly not as a showing off but as a rare orchid technique. I've edited out subsequent orchid-related reflections).
What I know how to convey, and what I want to convey: 1 — Process (cliche). Rather, more so, its dissembling within assembly, my version prettier than that, for instance, of Barry Le Va. Using Le Va as a crutch, then Trockel, then someone weirder albeit the shade of weird that is Lynne Cooke's repertoire. 2 — Communication around the depth of and rigor with which, I do so. But at the same time, elegance, and modesty. And profundity in acumen, and beauty in the tied-bow sails. On the waters of...The Six of Swords. The always and beyond.
Therein, again, an aspect of too muchness, a wanting and a waiting without waiting around, but also without being found and finding for myself.
I make these notes as a forest trail (in advanced of a next stage, a next stage being always teased and within it, you never hear from me, though that, too, I am reevaluating. Hopefully not so dark but with the correct gradation of feeling, yet surrendering a pre-conception of correctness). And as a precursor to future confessionals (accepting the confessional as a form).
Contesting the illustrative terms of "painting" or in their acceptance, deciding how to produce other resonances. Accepting not the inevitability of failure, for failure as a gimmick, or only as a gimmick (a utopian strategy), might be understood as conceited, too. A signature among a set of variables, cryptic and otherwise. That balance is the pursuit. Equilibrium and then some is the conversion of too-muchness into something temporarily, halfway, decent.
Halfway as medium. Or when they say, same pose, but with only 70 percent effort. Raising opacity, lessening strain. Surrender in one framework, "thinking without banisters" in others. Or, at minimum, a motion towards.
