The Line in Paint -Tag

A black ’L’ and a red ’L’ appear on the wall and seem to have a relation with an extra shape that each ‘L’ sits on.
The ‘L’s hover and float: The shape’s front, a white unpainted plastic, almost dematerializes. Mostly only a slight shadow or a reflected color peeling off from a middle layer of plastic tells us that the shape is something that sits a cm or so off the wall.
The line on the front is a painted area, built up from the use of tape. In this case the color is simple; a Mars Black for black; a Cadmium Red Middle taken slightly off for a bright but dark red: ‘Black’ and ‘Red’, Tag’ 2009.

Both ‘Tags’ come from Templates: Black Tag has an extended title #090401, Red Tag #090331. These templates hold pencil lines and painted masking tape. The Black Tag Template has yellow painted tape, for example.

The hang of the template on the wall depends on feeling. I work with sheets of graph paper first and fold corners and open again changing the hang, the corner fold length, until it all feels right, the wall becoming the canvas. The hanging heights are different, and the weights work off each other.
Typically, once happy with an arrangement, shape and hang, the numbers are cleaned up. The initial folding is rough and done by eye. Going back with simple numbers or ratios I look for common things; within the single template; a relation to previous work; the common or different numbers as ‘pair work’, until it all comes up nice and clean. Once this has been agreed upon the graph paper gets a heavy marker line drawn around the final shape. And again it goes back up on to the wall. Satisfied, the next stage is to cut ply board to the shape and double-side tape the shapes to the wall in their position.

Here is where the body further comes in. The wall is the canvas, which takes on a three-dimensional state, simply by adding the room – and the variable – the body in the room, on the move.
I tend to live with that for a few days, looking, passing, catching whatever seems to be there.
Eventually these things on the wall, markers of shape and space, start to feel problematic. The shapes or spaces that they create slip too easy. The tie to the body is perhaps too fleeting. The rest of the architecture feels too random in relationship and is out of sync.
Recently I have been working with the ‘L shape’. So unless something drastic happens I stay with the ‘L’ throughout the work.
Also the internal distance based on scale is generally a given. It can change when this ‘given’ doesn’t work.
With all these decisions out of the way I’m left, in the case of each Tag, with four positions. There are but four corners. This obviously would come across as extremely limited, even pragmatic. Though with working those four positions the possibly is infinite. How come? First of all there is that unstuck body, it moves around. Every time it moves it sees something different. And these differences need to work together in the long run. Only four possibilities! And we come back to this word ‘State’. How we receive something, understand its continuity, the shifting. We become ‘differently’ aware.
I choose one position and live with that until there is a sense of a problem. And the problem is quite real if we can call the visual and sensual real.
A side may appear to start bending. A parallel narrows or doesn’t give. The weight feels too heavy, too light, the movement and spin is working but not fluid. Everything gets incredibly complex. The architecture has really moved into these spaces. The moving body wants to negotiate in as many ways, and spaces, as it can, working not half the time, not three quarters, but right up to the brim of liminal tolerance. Four choices, changing them, again and again, become infinite with open possibility. Each choice has the potential to be fresh.

Tag’ is an installation piece part of Personal Space at ParisCONCRET, a three person exhibition including Richard Roth, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog , and myself. The opening is this Saturday, June 27th, and runs through July.