Unveiling the Unintended Underlying.
In search of new depth in layers of unintended information.
My project is grounded within a print I have extracted by rubbing graphite powder over part of the iron pulley wheel in the Martinet coal mine engine room. The engine room today lies derelict, isolated at the foot of the Martinet Terrill as testament to the landscape it has produced over 250 years ago. It has been cleaned up and restored and now forms part of the industrial heritage of Charleroi. It is one of many ghosts that hint at the past that has shaped the Charleroi of today.
What reveals itself in this print is the story of the interaction of me, the extractor, with the space of the pulley wheel machinery and now acts as the holder of information, a mediator between Charleroi and Ghent. Moving around and with it, unintended edge repetitions and cracks of underlying emptiness have appeared. They allude to the form and space that was once present and now resides only within the print. It tells of the method of interaction with subject matter rather than an accurate representation of the object. It is a reproduction, not a copy. Space is combined with time forming one large print full of potentialities and depth. Duration/time adds a new level of (unintended) depth/potential.
This results in a floating landscape of instruments that explore those underlying informations, attempting to extrude the layers of complexity that make up the print and therefore also thematize the relationship between object and extraction in new drawings. Matter of interest (repetition/crack/form) is cut out and extruded out of the larger whole to create new depth and dimension to the flattened information and now exists within the instruments which are tools to find new space.
The instruments (means to read and capture abstract information) explore how form reacts with form, form with empty space and empty space with empty space as a result of the interaction of the subject of study and the extraction method focusing on the elements of matter and emptiness.
Space resides in this juxtaposition of a radical archaeological extraction of moments of interest with straight and angular cuts captured in grided boundaries, and the interpretation of the resulting potential. Depth is recreated by this interpretation of the potential in the in-between space. The print is only a moment in time, an incomplete study of duration, where some parts are beginning to appear whilst others have already disappeared and the whole will never be fully seized. It will never be what it once was, nor what it will be and certainty not what it is. This story of extraction can never be recreated. By doing so, I create structures of complex potential, multiple points of view all focussing on diving deeply within the drawing and extending in a new dimension.
A step is taken back after the detailed investigation into the depths of the print to compare and criticise it as a whole. A symmetrical object producing complex potential. A floating landscape that has given life to new poetic structures.
