graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
Related to an earlier ‘roadkill’ can-double black lines drawing (posted here), which included the name of a colour amongst its compositional elements – occurring as a synecdochical fragment of a brand name - this example, utilizing similar subject matter (& stimulant products), perhaps more explicitly references the numerous works of Jasper Johns incorporating the stencilled names of colours onto-into their surfaces & compositions & especially, of course, those of a monochrome nature (paintings & drawings such as ‘Jubilee’, 'Periscope (Hart Crane)’, ‘Folly Beach’ & ‘False Start II’).
Although anchored to specific objects rather than freely-floating across the abstract formal structure as is mostly the case with those examples of Johns’ work, still the names of the colours in the drawing serve a similar function in suggesting a physical presence or property (& in these instances, identity) whilst – particularly drained of that colour to which they refer - drawing attention to the entirely abstract & arbitrary process of the linguistic naming of things & thus the discrepancy, the slippage, between the graphic signifier & that signified.
The intention with this drawing was to leave slightly less resolved the particular differentiation between figure & ground in order to suggest the coming closer together of each via the flattening process to which the ‘roadkill’ objects had been forcibly subjected, with the consequent loss of their specific, obviously different & separate three-dimensional quality.
Soundtrack:
The Smiths ‘Louder Than Bombs’
Tori Amos ‘Boys for Pele’
Pixies ‘Come On Pilgrim’, ‘Surfer Rosa’ & ‘Doolittle’
Pavement ‘Brighten the Corners’
Cat Power ‘You Are Free’
Lambchop ‘Damaged’
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