10 October 2025
“I have eliminated all text from my books—I want absolutely neutral material. My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of 'facts'...” —Ed Ruscha
I keep encountering artists who describe their practices as being concerned with presenting factual information, which is interesting to me when considering the impulse to make a work in the first place. Because that impulse is rooted in a void, a lack of control. Which to me is predicated on an inherently personal set of formative life experiences, the remembrance of which is almost entirely internal/subjective/self-defined. So maybe factuality, in relation to visual work, is when specificity of circumstance meets the isness of an image such that one is separated from their conception of their individuality yet pulling purely from it.