K.I.A.

Intercombinant Sculptures

I was in a mediation class, and received an energy-healing. It completely fixed a years-old eye injury from karate. I also had a profound past-life reading. I was told of this woman living this exhausting pioneer life on the prairies. She had two kids, they were very poor, and lived in a sod home. There were non-stop chores, especially cleaning and loads of laundry. Her sole creative outlet, in this muddy and mundane life, was to hang the washed clothes in colorful and interesting patterns on the line. Each time she did the laundry she would find some joy as she’d hang the shirts and pants and sheets in pretty new patterns.

Many months after that reading, it suddenly struck me: on the wall behind me, 25’ long, was exactly what had been described in the reading. Embedded in the story — which was quite long — was an exact and very accurate description of my artworks. My large-scale installation-paintings are basically separate colors and patterns carefully arranged, hanging in long lines like laundry. And they can be re-hung in new ways. (This technique was very specific to me, being borne of my particular experience making big art in a tiny Tokyo apartment. The psychic also knew nothing about me or my work.)

The soul is an infinite thing. Each lifetime is just a part of the whole -- like pieces of a collage, like panels in a painting, coming together in pretty patterns and colors, with infinite possibilities.

(See Recombinants for more)

Sculptures made from paintings. 2D, 3D, 4D works. Separately created paintings recombined three-dimensionally, in various ways over time, to create new forms and content. An infinitely unfinished work. Megacollage metapainting mashups.

Each individual work is a uniquely conceived idea (i.e. a Masai shield composed of mathematical formulae.) Each work has an originating image, and is done on panels that are recombinant — individual rows, columns, sections and so on can be moved, shifted, flipped, rotated (etc) to deconstruct the painting… and the more panels there are, the more the possible recombinations.

When the paintings are intermixed, all sorts of completely unforeseen  arrangements can arise both from the increase in number of panels, but also the collision of different subject matter enables are sorts of new connotations and meanings to accrete. The painting becomes an installation, a megacollage that grows in size, content, meaning and implication. Mathematical noation bumps up agains musical notation. Writings on nature are enmeshed with writings about proper behaviour. Curvilinear rock drawings become an oversized tessera in a mask mosaic…

(See also “Acceleration, Still” and “CRISPR SCULPTR” for other recombinant sculptures, and see Sculptures and Paintings for other explorations of the concept).