K.I.A.

Recombinant paintings, installations, sculptures

The below are large remixable, recombinant, intermixable works that function as paintings, installations, and sculptures. Click HERE to see how the works look when combined together to create an ever-growing, infinite work.

Paintings that infinitely transform in shape and meaning.

The large-scale / small-panel works evolved from necessity. I was making big paintings while living in a tiny apartment in Japan, so had to do the work in component sections. Though the works (importantly) always had a starting image, I realized that the panels comprising them could be arranged to change the initial form and evolve the meaning — and that separately made works could be added together into mega-works. The panels also enabled easy transportation, perfect for a nomad: very large works could be packed into just a suitcase. The first panels were wood (Tokyo) then canvas (L.A.) and then aluminum (Toronto).

Below are the original works, and various arrangements. To see how the works combine into much larger installations, see Intercombinants.

Masaimatical — 1996-ongoing. Dimensions variable. Acrylic and collage on aluminum panels, nuts, bolts. (See Images below for numerous configurations).

This project was a large painting in the form of a Masai shield comprised of mathematical formulae and graphs.  Lines and curves from the math graphs replicate or echo the shapes on the shield. (I woke up from sleep with the painting fully formed in my head; it was a dream leap, not a logical linear trek to the idea. Glyphs, calligraphy, graffiti, heiroglyphs, symbols, crop circle shapes and other ‘shapes = data’ often show up in my work).

Maasai shields denote information about the holder — for example, a wavy line drawn on the front might mean that the bearer ‘lives near the river’. That same wavy line, however, would mean ‘y(t)=Asin(2πft+φ)ytAsin2πftφ’ to a mathematician (a sin wave function). This is the key to the work: a single shape that conveys very different sets of information across culture and time, to different readers according to their background or experience. In a way this parallels the construction of the painting,  which is a singular image on a finite set of panels, but which, rearranged in different ways, reads completely differently to viewers. One remix of this work was seen  as a canoe; another recombination was interpreted by the viewer as a kirpan (a ceremonial knife carried by Sikhs); another saw a version as depicting a video game character; none of them knew they were looking at an iteration of the work, not its original state.   Other reconfigurations of this work had similarities to kites, which have existed in China, India, Japan and other countries for over a thousand years, and a future remix will reference the Large Hadron Collider. So, somehow, embedded in this work is information that crosses borders of time and place.) - CONT’D below

This underscores my feeling that the  universe is constructed from information that our brains interepret as reality, much like how computer code creates a video game world.  This opens the possibility that different people may interpret the underlying information differently, and that person is experiencing their own unique universe. (One sees a river, one sees a wave. Both are simultaneously right.)

I also use information, or text, formulae, data, etc, as a way of slow reveal over time. Because of the volume of words or images in some of the larger works, it might take years to notice a detail, a phrase, or embedded pun, discovered like an Easter egg. Words also underscore the mutable nature of a lot of my work, and the invitaiton of viewer’s creative involvement, physical or mentally  — for example the word ‘Blue’ could be be visualised hundreds of different ways by as many different people.

As with other works in this series, panels, columns, rows, and sections can be rearranged (by artist, curator, owner) to deconstruct the painting and give it new form. Key to this is the uniform panel size, the information on each separate panel, and the graphic black line. The work can also be intermixed with other works, so that it becomes a megacollage, and when spliced with separately conceived works, accretes new meanings. (See Intercombinants for examples.)

A future work will be divided into sections and sold to different buyers across the world. In order to ever show the work ‘whole’, agreements and negotiations will have to be done globally. It would be interesting to divide one painting across as many owners as possible, in as many places as possible — one owner each in 35 countries, say, for this work — so that it becomes a community effort to bring it together.

(The aluminum panels in this series were recycled from a local automotive paint factory, and the math formulae and graphs were repurposed from textbooks).

 StaccatoRest — 1997-Ongoing. Acrylic and phototransfer collage on aluminum panels, nuts, bolts.

This piece is composed of musical notation from different eras and cultures — Chinese, Western, Medieval , ’60s avant garde, pop music, classical, and so on. The compositions, sheet music and notations are layered above and through one another (just as music moves and mutates across cultures and over time.

Each panel can seen as a separate note, the arrangement of them a song.  As with music, the finite set of notes can create infinite melodies. The arranged work can be made rhythmic, minimalistic, beautiful, dissonant…

If you can read music, you can hear this painting (even if you can’t, some of the lyrics appearing on the panels may sound in your head.)

Polyvictorian – acrylic, pencil, and photo transfer on recombinant aluminum panels. Infinitely and continuously rearranged (origin, 1997); initial image 96 x 144″ .

A Polynesian mask composed from Victorian era imagery and etiquette text (appropriate wrist to ankle tennis attire, and so on), mottos, and homilies. (This is the second of the aluminum panel recombinant works. Though each work is an independent idea, if intermixed with other paintings there is some visual cohesion through the use of the calligraphic black line across works). These continue the multitemporal mashup / cultural collision theme that often crops up in my work.

The images below show a few arrangements of PV: a glitch of a couple rows, an exhibition install showing a disruption of the right side, an enfoldment of the work, the work hung on two faces of a corner, and the work completely disrupted.

After I had finished the painting and had done a few remixes (including the one emplaced in the corner) I happened to read a book called the Mayan Prophecies by Maurice Cotterell. He discovers, and lays out in the book with diagrams, that there is encoded imagery in Mayan artworks like the Lid Polyvictorian – acrylic, pencil, and photo transfer on recombinant aluminum panels. Infinitely and continuously rearranged (origin, 1997); initial image 96 x 144″ .

A Polynesian mask composed from Victorian era imagery and etiquette text (appropriate wrist to ankle tennis attire, and so on), mottos, and homilies. (This is the second of the aluminum panel recombinant works. Though each work is an independent idea, if intermixed with other paintings there is some visual cohesion through the use of the calligraphic black line across works). These continue the multitemporal mashup / cultural collision theme that often crops up in my work.

The images below show a few arrangements of PV: a glitch of a couple rows, an exhibition install showing a disruption of the right side, an enfoldment of the work, the work hung on two faces of a corner, and the work completely disrupted.

After I had finished the painting and had done a few remixes (including the one emplaced in the corner) I happened to read a book called the Mayan Prophecies by Maurice Cotterell. He discovers, and lays out in the book with diagrams, that there is encoded imagery in Mayan artworks like the Lid of Palenque.  He shows that if the image is laid back over itself  (using certain dotted shapes on the edge like registration marks), new hidden glyphs are revealed.  Whether or not, because of the complexity of the initial imagery, the new revealed images are simply a matter of pareidolia — that looks like a lion’s face! — I still find it very intriguing that through Mayan remixing, new meanings can be discovered. I was particularily struck at how my own rearranging of the Polyvictorian painting in the corner (5th photo below) resulted in an image very similar to a lion glyph from a superimposed Palenque lid made thousands of years ago. (And re: Palenque, see also my jet engine series.of Palenque.  He shows that if the image is laid back over itself  (using certain dotted shapes on the edge like registration marks), new hidden glyphs are revealed.  Whether or not, because of the complexity of the initial imagery, the new revealed images are simply a matter of pareidolia — that looks like a lion’s face! — I still find it very intriguing that through Mayan remixing, new meanings can be discovered. I was particularily struck at how my own rearranging of the Polyvictorian painting in the corner (5th photo below) resulted in an image very similar to a lion glyph from a superimposed Palenque lid made thousands of years ago. (And re: Palenque, see also my jet engine series.

Leaves of Steel

Photocopies of fascimilie of original text from Walt Whitman’s folio of “Leaves of Grass” (about nature) layered with scanned images of found leaves on shaped aluminum, hung in various ways.

Below are some as-yet-to-be-realized works, which, in a sense, are all part of a single work being created over decade. Each starts as a flat painting with an image, that gets disrupted as the work is arranged (rearranged, intermixed)….

DNA, Tectonic, Sail, Tsunami, Monolith, Bud

Recombinant installation (CRISPR SCULPTR) LINK: