Q
What inspired your preoccupation with the materiality of photography in the new work you are presenting at Unseen?
A
My work often begins with an observation or a discovery I make in my studio, which I will then try to recreate. My ideas are usually to do with testing the material boundaries of photography and text. The work I am showing at Unseen this year began when I was walking down the street on a rainy day and observed the disintegration of posters and cardboard after bikes and cars had driven over them. By the end of the day they formed what I refer to as ‘comets’ that spread out on the streets. The posters had previously carried information but throughout the day they were completely reduced to mere material. I am interested in ways that information is physically interacted with and how it is moved, used and disintegrated in daily life and in physical space. I tried to integrate this observation into my work.
Q
Tell us about the techniques you developed during the process.
A
I made my own tools, which are ink rollers covered with rubber mats. When I roll these over images they gradually break down until the image does not function as an image anymore – I try to get as close as possible to this breaking point. These techniques are ways to scale down the communication and circulation of information. I often use silkscreening, for example, which is a way to move from mechanical mass reproduction to a more manual form of reproduction in smaller quantities. I then use my own methods to further disintegrate them.
Q
In what ways do you see the work you make as photographic, given that your practice incorporates painting, sculpture and writing?
A
I work between media, but the interaction with photographic material is essential in all of my work. My practice is defined by the physical interaction with photography and text and it acts as both a homage to, and a departure away from, the materiality of information. In my work texts evaporate and images are burnt, disintegrated or made temporary in other ways – I am physically processing the idea of dematerialisation.
Q
Are your works an attempt to visualise an intangible presence found somewhere between emergence and disappearance?
A
This is very much related to one of the preconditions of representation, which is to make something visible that is not there. Through fragmentation and disappearance, I try to break the constructions of meaning that images and text usually create. When you are confronted with remnants and fragments of representation, then hopefully this process of recollecting and creating meaning becomes a more conscious and precious act.