Petites Recherches

1997


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Content
The title for this series of drawings reflects the fact that they were derived from an earlier series of ambitious large-scale prints entitled A La Recherche du Centre Exact. These new images were physically smaller and technically less complex, hence Petites. Yet, they were still very much in the exploratory vein, and therefore Recherches. The dates of execution are included within each title to reflect the immediacy of each composition's creation, declaring: "This is what I was thinking this day."

Each composition consists of a central, massy area surrounded by a skein of more ephemeral lines and marks. On one level, the imagery is suggestive of embryos and yolk sacks, associations which are complemented by the minuscule figures within the central area, entangled in the act of copulation. At the same time, the skein of surrounding lines creates a sense of space and scale. The lines and the space dissolve into the surrounding white space of the paper, making it impossible to fix where the "image" ends and the "non-image" begins, where the "object" ends and the "space" begins, or, in keeping with the growth/birth/possibility motif of the series, where the "I" ends and the "non-I" begins.

Process
Each composition in this series is a unique composition, consisting of a printed image on top of which I drew by hand with charcoal, pastels and graphite. The printed image portion of each composition was extracted from the earlier series of digital prints and modified. This segment was printed, centered on a large sheet of white paper, using digital Iris inkjet printer technology (Cone-Laumont Editions). I then drew by hand onto this sheet and the printed image.

Titles
Petites Recherches, # 1: 5/22/97 18" x 21" 1997
Petites Recherches, # 2: 5/22/97 18" x 21" 1997
Petites Recherches, # 3: 5/22/97 18" x 21" 1997
Petites Recherches, # 5: 5/29/97 17" x 20" 1997
Petites Recherches, # 9: 6/7/97 19" x 24" 1997
Petites Recherches, #10: 6/10/97 17" x 20" 1997
Petites Recherches, #11: 6/10/97 19" x 21" 1997
Petites Recherches, #12: 7/5/97 20" x 24" 1997
Petites Recherches, #13: 7/5/97 20" x 25" 1997
Petites Recherches, #14: 7/5/97 19" x 24" 1997