Memo

Memo, 2012, lead on paper, h 14.76 x w 10.73 (and enlargement)
Exhibited in: Compounds of a Prism, 23 August 2012
another vacant space
Biesentalerstrasse 16
D-13359 Berlin
Germany/ Deutschland
Curator: Adam Nankervis
Website

After flying from Rome, to Tokyo, to New York, a single dot was made with 2mm lead on a sheet of paper from a hotel pad. The mark was made at 113 West 60th Street, New York, NY 10023 USA in sub level room SL24Q on Wednesday August 23, 2012 at approximately 18:11.

The lead holder was red, with aluminum grip, nickel-plated brass fittings, and plastic barrel marked “ITALY KOH-I-NOOR TECNIGRAPH 5611” in silver. The lead advance push button was black.

The sheet of paper was approximately 14.76 cm high by 10.73 cm wide with an off-white coloration hinting towards yellow. The word “MEMO” is written at the top in a light blue. The words “EXCEL HOTEL TOKYU” are at the bottom of the sheet contained in a small blue box with the type knocked out to paper white. The words “TOKYU HOTELS” are directly below in blue. The paper was taken from the Haneda Excel Hotel Tokyu at Haneda Airport, 3-4-2, Hanedakuko, Ota-ku, Tokyo 144-0041 Japan.

"Artists have been invited to contribute work, a refraction from the prism of their process, a kernel of a work, signaling a fragment of change, and metamorphosis. the amputation from a greater field, where the signal is made a seed, a refraction as opposed to a reflection of the intended portent. This focus point/ vanishing point hints to a further whole, contained in an assembly of vitrines through out another vacant space. The vitrine cases measure 40cm/ 50cm.

The essence of this exhibition is to take a microcosmic element of your work, a fragment, a kernel to be installed in a vitrine case within the space. This element may be a sketch, an object, a notation to be exhibited as part of a whole in homage to the artist Kurt Schwitters." — Adam Nankervis

Pin pricks on white A4 size paper alternately viewed in front of a light source and underneath it, August 22 2010

Pin pricks on white A4 size paper alternately viewed in front of a light source and underneath it, Sunday, August 22, 2010, Japan Standard Time
Black Stars on a White Sky
September 4 2010 Chateau de Sacy 1 rue Verte 60190 Sacy-le Petit France
Museum MAN-Chateau de Sacy Picardy France July 2010
Jean Cocteau Notre Dame de France altar London May 1 201
Curator: Adam Nankervis

Tomorrow I will leave the house, or more appropriately "the home," for the first time in ten days. I will walk out the front door, wait for the crossing light to change from red, to yellow, to green, look both ways, cross the street, turn right and walk approximately fifteen steps down the street to the post office here on the island of Hikoshima in Shimonoseki, Japan. I will mail you a white sheet of A4 size paper. There is nothing written on the piece of paper; however, I sat with a pin and made hundreds of small pin pricks in the paper. Each pin prick was accompanied with a clearly spoken "ow." It seemed to be a miniature trip out into the farthest possible reaches of the galaxy, or was it a journey deep into the complexities of a molecular system?

Ragged Right

Ragged Right, 2008, archival ink on acid free 74 pound polypropylene, h 12" x w 9"

Plot keywords from the Internet Movie Database for a 1979 film were carefully transcribed by hand; however, the writing became increasingly compacted and illegible as the transcription process proceeded, mirroring the increasing strangeness of the movie’s storyline.

An Anchor

An Anchor, 2000, 16 drawings, ink & white-out on paper, hardbound book with newspaper cover, h 8.5 x w 5.5

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. – Vladimir Nabokov

At some point in 2000 I accidentally came across a copy of The New York Times dated Wednesday, April 21, 1999 that lodged itself in my memory for months to come. This particular copy of the Times was remarkable for the reason that it contained an article about a man named Terrance Johnson, a reporter with a camera hidden in his eyeglasses. Although a licensed social worker, he took a low paying job at a mental hospital in order to expose rampant patient mistreatment. I felt that Terrance’s humanitarian actions needed to be observed; nevertheless, I must admit that my interest in Terrance was not entirely benign. Being an image-maker myself, I felt an intense envy of his omnivorous recording.

It seems that Terrance was also aware of the awesome power that his camera eyeglasses endowed him with – just look at his expression, or more accurately, his lack of expression. I find the quirky blankness of his stare compelling because it subtly hints at a confidence imparted by the righteousness of his cause, and perhaps more significantly, by the fact that nothing can elude his observations. The fixity of his stare, as well as his emptiness, became a fascination for me.

It stood to reason that a method mirroring the intensity of Terrance’s techniques would be an appropriate starting point for an experiment. I might begin to get at something beyond the surface of the cryptic, half–toned image by staring intensely at the newspaper clipping for approximately one minute, then recreating the image from recollection. This extended method would allow a complex portrait to emerge that would both describe my subject and honor him through repetition. This would be my tribute to Terrance the undercover reporter.

The framework of serial repetition seemed simple enough; however, in short order comprehensiveness and verisimilitude gave way to an interest in scrutinizing emerging peculiarities and following their tangents. The focus became less about accumulating details into a whole than a decoding of a preexisting and surprisingly complete portrait. By increasingly relying on my recollections rather than my one-minute of actual observation, the image unlocked and allowed something unfamiliar, yet compelling to emerge.

16 drawings later I still don’t know any more about Terrance Johnson the reporter with a camera hidden in his eyeglasses, but I am very familiar with the way that his right lapel almost touches the edge of the frame, the similarity of the inverted angle of the bridge of his glasses and the open collar of his shirt, as well as the way that his eyes seem to be looking at two slightly different points. Lastly, and inexplicably, an anchor began to feature prominently in the drawings.