New Cave Painting No. 12
This textured inscription painting, comprised of almost two-dozen layers of the
artist’s loose handwriting, sets forth a cohesive tentative theory of post-theory art in
words that range from the legible to illegible-abstract. Visually, the piece references
human historical cave art, a time when gestural marks, lines, and curves—alone
without words—held explanatory and communicative powers. The piece also
visually references Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, and, indirectly, Basquiat. As bodyfelt
experience, the viewer may perhaps feel the age of the marks, by their color,
and experience both intensity and impermanence. Emotionally, the piece may
evoke feelings of peace and continuity—or, just as possible, feelings of urgency and
concern. Substantively, the piece is proposed to land in all three human places, the
head, heart, and body, in that it invites the viewer to reach further back—past the
articulable emotions of today—toward our instinctual inscriptions and markings, not
a refined language, but perhaps the first form of human theory-making. As posttheory
art, the piece may assert that human theory-making need not be purely
logical and airtight—it may be enough to be from our inspiration and our magical,
and received that way too. And maybe our most important human theories might
survive best through our instinctual and unexplainable, just as our historical cave
paintings do.
This textured inscription painting, comprised of almost two-dozen layers of the
artist’s loose handwriting, sets forth a cohesive tentative theory of post-theory art in
words that range from the legible to illegible-abstract. Visually, the piece references
human historical cave art, a time when gestural marks, lines, and curves—alone
without words—held explanatory and communicative powers. The piece also
visually references Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, and, indirectly, Basquiat. As bodyfelt
experience, the viewer may perhaps feel the age of the marks, by their color,
and experience both intensity and impermanence. Emotionally, the piece may
evoke feelings of peace and continuity—or, just as possible, feelings of urgency and
concern. Substantively, the piece is proposed to land in all three human places, the
head, heart, and body, in that it invites the viewer to reach further back—past the
articulable emotions of today—toward our instinctual inscriptions and markings, not
a refined language, but perhaps the first form of human theory-making. As posttheory
art, the piece may assert that human theory-making need not be purely
logical and airtight—it may be enough to be from our inspiration and our magical,
and received that way too. And maybe our most important human theories might
survive best through our instinctual and unexplainable, just as our historical cave
paintings do.
