25 June 2026
Ordinal air (working title): this is one of the more rewarding paintings I've made in a while. Inner and outer alignment. Based on some tiny paper Earth lanterns I saw receding into Tyler's room from the staircase at our flat. Delicate duplicate planets hanging in the thick summer air, intermittently nudged and spun by the wind from the fan out of sight at the other end of the room.
Ordinal data is a categorical, statistical data type where the variables have natural, ordered categories and the distances between the categories are not known.
I've been looking at a lot of Bellmer's drawings and prints again this week, specifically his engravings from his Mode d'Emploi (1967) portfolio. There's one particular piece from the seven in that collection—a small one (roughly 4x6 inch plate) titled Ways of Daring—that I think I can trace a lot of the thinking around this work to in retrospect. Its weblike line work masterfully gets at something similar to how I'm trying to establish structures that allow planes to interact beyond their pictorial functionality. Or, more simply, how line can be a simultaneously cohering and fragmenting force. It's also emotionally laid bare yet confounding in the way that I like. In the bottom right there appears to be a baby (or two) engrossed in something. A step up and to the left are two more figures wrapped around and bound to each other like a Christo sketch, possibly in a sexual position (probably; it's Bellmer). Up and to the right from them, almost in the middle of the composition, is a more muddled group of figures, to my eyes an orgiastic heap. Pulling away from them toward the top right corner is an inscrutable knotty cluster, maybe limb-like. And at the top left, almost floating but for one planar line by his knees, is what looks like a kneeling figure with a beaked nose. An upward growth and a deconstruction, phases linked and estranged.
Back to my painting—it occurs to me that a part of it could also be a swipe at the emotional register of time passing in the 5,000 mile space between two opposite poles. Here are some selected lyrics from “Picture of Return” by Superfan:
The time that’s blowing me through Deflated surroundings Putting appearance underneath the skin
Breaking at the corners The room acting as my witness To manipulated order I’m wishing his face was never a picture of return