proximities is a group of works that were created during a month long residency at the chinati foundation. at the time of my arrival, i was given an arrival packet, which began with a quote from donald judd about site specificity – which offered me a starting point of conversation; particularly as i had made numerous sound installations that were site specific, but was quite reluctant to embrace the idea of a site specific painting. thus, i began to think about site specific making as opposed to site specific meaning, and my experience through pushing and pulling against judd’s text allowed my work to open up in numerous ways. to say it was an important step in my evolution would be an understatement, as the shifts that began in early 2010 have been working on me in numerous ways since. you can read a more in-depth response to my experience at chinati that was printed in their annual magazine here.
the body of work consisted of several paintings, a series of works on paper, some sculpture, a sound work and a film (which has yet to be completed). all of the works reflect certain visual aspects of the architecture and landscape of the studio and its immediate surroundings, as well as using the vowel structure of the judd text that was given to me, as a score. all of these works used two previous modes of making: the use of found information towards the making of a score, and intuitive responses to the actions generated by the scores. what was very different was the act of looking away from the landscape of the object itself (be it a painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.) and acknowledging visual characteristics of my surroundings. it was, basically, the first time in nearly 23 years that i looked at things in the world to help me derive imagery.
