I try to think of a place where I can de-place it and replace it when I have finished the painterly gesture. Do I want to put it on a pedestal? Do I want to hide it from view or even make it disappear completely? Or do I want to make it available so that someone can keep going with it?

Is the fetishist aspect really a part of me? Isn’t it more important to keep alive the very idea that the gesture can be reiterated ad infinitum? Basically, isn’t the potential that human beings have of leaving an imprint on a two-dimensional surface what I have always wanted to pursue? Isn’t the gesture perhaps more important than the object?

If I am reflecting here on how to conserve this object-generator isn’t it because I want to try to draw out a form that can hold this feeling inside it? 

 

SOME HYPOTHESES

 

1 PLACE IT IN THE WALL

Make a hole in the wall and put it inside: make a niche or embed it?

 

2 ERECT A LITTLE MONUMENT TO IT

Put it on a pedestal. Underline it, put it on a symbolic level detached from other things. A large container that makes it feel like a small and concentrated thing? Or a support that sustains it in order to place it in relation to all the other things around it?

 

3 BUILD A HOME FOR IT

A roof over the head that protects it. A tent to live in. A piece of furniture to contain it. A symbolic space that protects it, welcomes it and makes it feel at ease.

 

4 PASS IT FROM HAND TO HAND

Keep it alive. Leave it to my son to continue the process. (Obviously by this I mean ‘process’ in the metaphorical sense; he can do what he wants with it. Not necessarily paint.)

 

5 CREMATE IT

Burn it to reduce it to ashes. Reduce it. Synthesise it to then keep the remains as a relic, or dispose of it in water, earth or air?

 

6 USE IT FOR HOLDING TOMATOES 

As soon as I finished writing this piece, I read it to my eighteen-year-old son, who responded: “Can I really use it and do what I want with it? Even to keep tomatoes in?”

 

7 REPLACE IT TOGETHER WITH THE SITE

The bowl, the place where the substance is generated alongside the site, the place where the thought is formed. The two opposing and complementary points of all my work, kept together in a single container. 

(Written in 2020)