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Hair of my Cheney Chin Chin
144 x 396 inches, 2009

ESCAPE RATES | ESCAPARATES Wall Drawing
Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, New York

This is a wall drawing constructed in a period of 20 days. It is charcoal and black ink applied directly on the gallery wall. It's an improvised image referencing several sources, ranging from newspaper press photography, Japanese manga, comic books and classical European paintings. It's a visual personal narrative that I'm creating on the wall as the drawing progresses.

Through my work it is my intention to elevate drawing to the level of painting. Usually Drawing is considered the birth of a painting, it is the preliminary sketch, the foundation in which a painting is later constructed. In this instance the drawing, which is improvised and organically constructed by hand without any of the usual techniques or devices used on murals - like grids or projection.

Here the drawing is the finished product but it is later deconstructed by painting. Painting in this instance being the DEATH of the DRAWING.

In direct constrast to my improvised organic drawing construction, the painting deconstruction is planned and process heavy.

I go up to the wall and paint white, measured rectangular shapes in acrylics. Slowly creating a grid, usually something upon which one could build, in this instance I'm manipulating the white spaace, morphing the drawing from one narrative to another. Destroying it, pixelating the drawing out of existence and unraveling the narrative - deconstructing it until at the end the viewer is just facing a white wall.

It took me 20 days to construct the wall drawing. It took me 5 days to deconstuct it.


view video: construction and deconstruction