Arrays of Sketches (extension)

Instead of framing individually the preliminary drawings for my paintings like as many little models of the real thing, I found it interesting to present them in a scenography of the elaboration process, thus creating an image with a radically impredictable impact. The compositions of my series Travels and Encounters set up colors along a chaotic drawing, with a figure and a ground each characterized by its own set of colors, but both with the same outline. The latter, before the colors are applied, is a distribution of patches of four greys.

The figure (the central four squares) combines the synesthetic colors of two names proportionally to the intensity of the underlying greys. For instance, the names `Edith Piaf' ( ) and `Miles Davis' ( ) become:

The four hues of the background are figurative of a mood associated with the persons or the places denotated by the name :

There are 24 permutations of 4 greys in the figure and as many for the background, and thus a grand total of 576 sketches for each encounter of two names. The election of one of these possibilities for the actual realization as a painting comes only after the brute force generation of the 576 sketches. Aesthetic gesture and judgment thus become massively dissociated, contrary to the traditional artistic practice. A space is opened which harbors the eventuality of an impredictable plastic presence.

576 Encounters of 'Edith Piaf' and 'Miles Davis'.
Cibachrome on aluminium. 244x244cm. 2004.

Another way to visualize the Matrix is through the succession in time of Sketches, column after column and line after line. :