view16 May 2026
Saw the Duchamp show at MoMA while I was in New York. Master puppeteer, seems like he operated with such an unfathomably wide top-down view of his context that he transcended it entirely. A pretty amazing feeling to walk chronologically through the unmatchably rigorous, curious, and poetic path he charted. I got the sense that his constant iterating on the forms he obsessed over was his way of rotating them around a kind of internalized examination axis to spatially project and then destabilize their measurable characteristics. Which generated a metaphysical language that allowed him to endlessly probe how objects relate to each other and to us as seeing and sensing bodies. In space, in time, in the imagination. And that language, seen in its entirety, felt surprisingly generous. I think because it was always pointed inward. Used to satisfy something that may have manifested as a disruption because of how original it was, but was meant to expand rather than sabotage. That's a long way of saying he was ahead of his time and was graceful in proving/sharing that.
Some personal favorite moments: one of his small Rotoreliefs—cerulean blue/white/a kind of tangerine orange, the central form a hook-shaped line-drawn half light bulb with dashes shooting off of it as implied light rays. Delicate, alive, absent of the thing it represents yet conjuring it all the same. And a 1956 small ink drawing of a jacket on two pieces of what looked like transparent tracing paper, his tiny handwritten name on the topmost piece floating over the space representing where the name tag would be on the bottom piece. The inner lining of the jacket represented by grids drawn on to that same bottom layer—simple suspension, non-duality in one choice. To say nothing of the Swift Nudes (escaping, illuminating, darting, receding). The dynamism exceeded my expectations, and they were lofty.
view14 May 2026
Paul Thek @ Galerie Buchholz (NY): didn't get to make the big Pace show because it wasn't open on the one day I had free to walk around, but I'm guessing it had the lion's share of the good stuff. Even so, it was worth seeing for the new-to-me 1973 series of collaborative collages he made with Ann Wilson. I believe there were five of them, each organized around a central triangle shape. One filled with a cloudy blue sky that bled into a bird form, another filled with gold leaf, another framing a sea horizon. Diaristic in approach and feeling, lyrics (Beatles) and sections of religious texts scrawled along the edges of the triangles or floating around them, line drawings of animals cut out and dropped in here and there (a sheep with the words “kiss me” next to its face). Refreshing in its playfulness, a collaborative game. Felt like two friends trying to out-mantra each other. Perhaps they resonated with me because of the “inscrutable spiritual symbol” stuff I've been trying my hand at (as described by Jonathan). Also enjoyed the two 1975 “Untitled (Grapes)” newspaper paintings. Done seemingly so “correctly” (and directly), but handled with such an abundant and loose hand that they break down in the good way on close inspection. In one of them, a moment where the thick green vine squiggles part like curtains to reveal a shape that looks like a curling cartoon shrub underneath.
view12 May 2026
Tethering (working title): revisited the bench subject, as my first attempt didn't really do it for me in the end when I got fresh eyes on it yesterday. As nice as the worked-in color was optically, there's just something about the physical quality of really thick, built-up paint that I'm repelled by in my own work (not in the work of others who do it well, to be clear). I guess it has something to do with preserving intentionality, lightness of touch, sensitivity, etc. Anyway, iterating on/coming back to subjects has been something of a game changer for me; something that being in my own space surrounded by my reoccurring thoughts has catalyzed. Slowly getting over the disappointment that accompanies an idea that doesn't reach its potential and learning to take instructions from it on new iterations instead. This time I focused a lot more on repetitive touch and constant subtraction, reminded me a bit of how it felt to handle the paint that made Destruction as well as building—never letting it settle or cover too much space, always making more marks and negating those marks over and over again. This one does feel like it got pretty close to something inherent to the visually disorienting quality that made the bench's anatomy appealing in the first place, but I gave it a border that ended up connecting to the bench's rail in a similar way to the last time I tried, which felt a bit gimmicky. But that could possibly be negated as well with a simple bisecting line in pencil or a slight tweak in the transition from the border to the rail, so we'll see if it can be resolved. A lasting image of Max Keene's wonderful piece World Dance (2025) has been going around the city with me in my mind this week.
view10 May 2026
Tethering
The holes in my socks hovered over my bedroom floor
covered in sun-
faded loops of brown carpet.
it had been a while since I watered my only houseplant,
I didn't realize
because it was still green—you reminded me
so I grabbed the water gun
to feed it in time
the mist was tiny then suddenly everywhere
like you
view8 May 2026
Image inventory: a vacant front desk in the lobby of an abandoned office building with a black chair manning the desk like a person, sky blue construction dividers funneling people towards a dead end, a full white trash bag, a full black trash bag, a full orange trash bag, a lion in low relief (Marble Arch), a lion in low relief (golden door knocker in Clerkenwell), a cardboard sign with smiling green hills (Horniman Primary), square flowers, Lilo & Dags, a trampled flower on the ground in a tube station with one leaf outstretched, the word “you” rubbed out of almost transparent drips on the window of a tube carriage, a pointed cloud poking out above a cluster of softer clouds, a 90s gas meter, a 90s power meter, a silver dragon with red eyes and a red tongue foregrounded over a distant horizon with small black figures, a black iron boat with a worried looking fish underneath it (Vintry), a tube map almost entirely erased by people who have leaned on it, earrings in a bag that look like fallen crescent moons, a party in a mirror embedded in a thick wall of vines.
view6 May 2026
Belief structure: finally a title and a resolution for the small wireframe star sculpture painting I've been working on. Originally thought it would serve as a study for a larger work, and it still might. But it holds its own now, I think. Jonathan's feedback helped me believe in it (thank you Jonathan if you're reading this). I've been spending a lot of time with Hans Bellmer's drawings and paintings, especially an untitled painting from 1956 that was included in Galerie 1900-2000's 2023 show The Surreal World of Hans Bellmer—a thin, delicate, precise constellation of thin forms, subtly highlighted by small pink accents, spanning a cloudy blue-green space that bring to mind knuckles or protrusions from a landscape in the vein of the 20s Paul Klee linework stuff I've mentioned here recently. That must have been a guide for Belief structure, and it seems like it is becoming fruitful to veer further into the space that work lives in as I try to formulate my own way of getting forms to reckon with the illusory space they inhabit, both in the imagination and on the surface.
view4 May 2026
Adrian Morris at Sylvia Kouvali: first time seeing his work in person, and first time seeing a show at Sylvia Kouvali. Which I mention because it will likely be my last if they install every painting show like this one. The gallery's space has some natural charm with its patterned wood floor and roughly-textured white walls capped by a ring of pale yellow tiling that kisses the ceiling, but the room was really dark, and the paintings were inexplicably lit by fluorescent white tube lights placed directly underneath them. Not only did this completely change the experience of the color and surface dimensionality of the work, but when you try to get close to a painting, the light nearly blinds you from below. Completely distracting, irresponsible, and unfair to the artist and the work. Not to mention the audience. Curatorial malpractice. It takes a lot for me to complain, but it's warranted here. Especially when presenting work that is all about subtlety of line and texture and space via long-term accumulated surfaces. The work is probably lovely in the right setting, and I'm glad I saw it. One little portion that was chipped away from a pink painting to reveal an entirely cerulean blue layer embedded deep down was worth the visit. I can imagine they were real mediations. I just think Mr. Morris would turn in his grave if he were to see how his life's work is being treated in this show.
view2 May 2026
“Beggar's Song” by Gregory Orr (2002)
Here's a seed. Food
for a week. Cow skull
in the pasture; back room
where the brain was:
spacious hut for me.
Small then, and smaller.
My desire's to stay alive
and be no larger
than a sliver
lodged in my own heart.
And if the heart's a rock
I'll whack it with this tin
cup and eat the sparks,
always screaming, always
screaming for more.
view30 April 2026
Bench: painted a bench I saw in Dulwich Park while walking there a few weeks ago. Made of wooden slats riveted to thin, flat, ribbon-like iron rails. I remember that from a certain angle it separated from its function and took on the appearance of something like a rickety bridge, or piano keys, or teeth. That Ruscha pastel and gunpowder drawing Self (1967) came to mind after I painted it—the attempt at solidified grace. And the rail attached itself to the image's border, which I taped off loosely (for no discernible reason, but in hindsight was a decision that gelled nicely with the slight warping of the planks that comprise the bench's sitting surface). Thought about Rita talking about making unforgiving paintings too. An intentional arrangement of an observation, a speculative suggestion for seeing. Color needs to be worked in a bit more, but it's almost there.
view28 April 2026
A painting where the emergence of the forms that comprise it is delayed and resisted for as long as possible. A monochrome painting, intense flatness, forms only described by short light shadows and textures. A painting with linework topography built into its prepared surface by using thickened transparent primer. A bleeding background. A cloud as a color/linework study. A painting on a layer of bubbles. A painting made by scraping away black and white over a colorful underpainting wash. A collage made with clear tape tinted by thin washes of acrylic. A painting of an image broken into Doppler segments—a meeting in the image near where the segments are closest/most intense.