Rational liquid

If you could watch the process of these paintings unfold, you might get the sense that sections of cinematic frames were compiling in layers within a fixed parameter, rather than shooting past in a linear procession. Fragments of time would accumulate vertically, enmeshing relationships between places, histories, and events to gradually reach a condensed point of stillness. These images suggest suspended states that don’t necessarily allow an ideal progression.

Incongruous convergences are at play between sites of investigation and observation with reference to empirical evidence, faith, illusion and historical hoax. These images are decisively made, yet they are ambiguous and revel in uncertainty. The process through which they solidify may be seen to echo the way a decision or sense of reason might form. Countless perspectives are turned over, waded through until something crystallizes. Liquid possibilities are pushed around, grappled with and left to set. This apparently seamless edit is not an answer by any means but more of an acutely meditated proposition.

On closer inspection clarity starts to break down, triggering the sense that behind the masquerade of the naturalist vista, things are not quite ‘right’. In a material parallel, the painted surface does not retain the level of detail observed by a cursory first glance. Up close, the veil of realism can be unpicked in a similar way that judgment shifts according to varying degrees of investigation. Perception is taken to task.

From a panoramic landscape to the focus of a microscope lens our perspective shifts from further than the eye can see, to the prospect of what is invisible to the naked eye. This passage between vastness and scrutiny begins to suggest a broader framework of ideas swelling through the adjacency of singular images. We may need to re-calibrate our judgment and read between the lines.

Susan Jacobs, October 2009