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How do you use deterioration/decay?

To start the ball rolling ...

I worked on an installation of large graphite wall drawings I knew I was going to have to erase at the end of the exhibition. This got me thinking about thinking of erasure as killing off the drawings/my creations, and I wanted to involve viewers while still maintaining some distance for them to remain spectators. On my erasure day, I had viewers roll a die, and in five minute intervals, I erased sections of the drawing according to the die rolls, digitally documenting the images to create digital images that are subject to rearrangement in re-exhibition -- I exhibited a subset of these in the same gallery, following the erasure of the wall drawings. I was less sad to see my drawings go than I thought I was going to be. Navigating permanence verses impermanence has taken hold of my work.

Tags: age, concept, decay, deterioration, erasure, time

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deirdre A. Fox on May 16, 2008 at 15:30

Hi. I like the rebirth of the painting ... does it re-decay now?

Your intentional disregard for your pieces (treating it like furniture) is, as you note, a telling reflection of the distancing that often occurs after conception develops into what is thought to be a finished manifestation; the painting becoming an imprint of its surroundings. I really like that idea conceptually. It might be interesting to send paintings off into different surroundings to intentionally soak those surroundings up ... e.g. the back alley for a day, the park for a day, the school yard for a day, a hospital for a day, etc.; sure, some of the paintings would not survive their treatment; others would find a precious place in someone's home after being rescued, and others would be there for one to retrieve, having soaked up their contexts. Just a thought. But perhaps, for you (it sounds like it's the case), it's too integral that it be your personal life, torment, excitement, mundaneness, etc. that the painting soak in, a part of you, shall we say.

I feel distancing very early on, cycling through expanding and shrinking distance in my work process, and so too, when I consider my finished works.

Permalink Reply by Catherine Mascrès on May 16, 2008 at 17:25

we always keep on evolving, so we make new creations, the eldest are left behind, every new one becomes old fast...because we keep on creating...because we need to. Since a year, I "paint" using natural material such as blackberries, flower juice. These things evolve with time...they rippen, they have their own life, their own evolution...

Permalink Reply by Deirdre A. Fox on May 16, 2008 at 17:40

The new that becomes old doesn't stay old, if you understand what I mean; rediscovery makes the old new again, though most likely (perhaps necessarily or inevitably) different... as you say, evolution. Back and forth, even from the point of thinking of a mark, making a mark, etc. When we are done marking on the canvas (or otherwise making the work), we become like the viewer, even more so as the time extends between creation and viewing, and yet, with a connection that remembers the making and periodically relives it (perhaps mentally or emotionally reengages it), one the viewer cannot share.

One can employ strategies for slowing deterioration, extending longevity ... some natural materials are less fugitive than others (paints, so to speak, before mass chemical manufacture). Yet, still, the piece that lives crackles, etc. There's a limit to its preservation, which we will find even with the master surviving works of centuries past.

Permalink Reply by Catherine Mascrès on May 16, 2008 at 19:38

our work is "ephemere" and so are we. Yes, there are fixatives!!! A past painting for us can be of course new to someone else. But we do not deny our done ones, they are done and past, that's all.

Permalink Reply by Deirdre A. Fox on May 16, 2008 at 19:45

I think our "done" ones, so long as they do physically exist, and perhaps even in the memory of them, as memories can reinvent themselves as much as they can ingrain themselves, can become new to us, too; here, perhaps we simply disagree. C'est la vie.

Permalink Reply by Catherine Mascrès on May 16, 2008 at 19:51

Of course we can rediscover an old one (I am old enough to have made enough(among other things) to see that way...). I still agree to all I've done either erased, transformed, having taken the athmosphere of such and such a place...But am also prone to destruction, to self destruction... aren't we all???