barren day 16
White plastic eraser
Rauschenberg acquired a Willem de Kooning drawing and erased it see whether a drawing could be produced from entirely erasing and removing marks rather than adding them. The act of labour and production was elevated within the boundaries of what could be defined as art. The drawing becomes psychological. It becomes the idea of obliterating an eminent figure and brings the idea of trace to the forefront of visibility.
He has been described as iconoclastic but not for smashing iconic art but for breaking up ideas and notions regarding drawing and making. It comes under the act of a deconstructive process and process does seem to be central to our collaboration. Joseph Kosuth who wrote on Philosophy after Art comments on Ad Reinhardt’s painting noting ‘painting had to be erased to make room for the art’ and Reindhart certainly worked back towards the canvas to create a different surface.
Meanwhile Dave has four boards which have been carefully painted, sanded and painted again. In the sanding he is erasing the painting he embarked upon and while the board or canvas is not revealed the removal of paint appears to have left a drawing. Tiny points accumulate to create shaded spheres. It is interesting to compare Reinhardt’s black canvases which were a note to departing from painting and negating the values associated with painting, with Dave’s spheres which do not use gesture. Rather an attitude of labour and method for the removal of paint. Whereas Reindhart’s work deconstructs the romantic and mythical notions of painting whilst being complete reflective of the tradition of painting Dave’s method does not so much indicate the tradition of painting but seems to indicate a differentiation of class, labour and attitude towards a painting. There are signs of the minimalist aesthetic achieved through deconstruction but there is a labour intensive anonymity to the method which removes that self associated with a painting.
A psychological idea of painting clear here – Reinhardt attempted to delete the signs associated with painting but Dave’s erasure appears to reveal other signs through process. This is perhaps as a renovator Dave employs both the acts of artists and the methods of trade. These combine to make a thoughtful approach to process.
We are used to the realist social images born out of the realist movement and now depicted in photography and contemporary painting but conceptual painting that bears the marks of class is worth a consideration. Particularly when the minimalist aesthetic once associated with high ideals of formalism then became the rhetoric of aspirationals demonstrated through interiors and design. White pace was deemed as negative space but became that which denotes modern nature, elegance and conveys power and a refined taste associated with the upper class strata.
My work of an architectural screen depicts the exact number of queens for the spaces on a chessboard elongated into a screen which was designed to comment on the powerful rhetoric which is our architecture of space. It stands off the wall leaving the shadow, a space for the margins and that which is veiled and hidden behind rhetoric. John W. Pracejus, G. Douglas Olsen and Thomas C. O’Gunn (2006 ) collaboratively wrote an article on Space, Rhetoric, History and Meaning clearly conveying the implication of using a white space to challenge art historical ideas, a visual idea rather than pictorial event. It offers an opportunity for demonstrating social forces so when looking at my screen and Dave’s white boards with black spheres I am struck by the symbiotic significance of our work. The use of technology to produce mine smacks of industry and labour whilst Dave’s is hands on, the white designates powerful spaces and becomes a visual conversation on aesthetics, the use of white space for drawing spaces which are imbued with power tussles and social architecture.
