Cut-up-poem on painting on cardboard, prayer rug size. Instructions for use: aim directly towards the nearest conscientious brain.

↓ “Pray be …” or “Your part of Time”, 510 x 785 mm, mixed media on cardboard.

Apply and repeat. But be quick about it. We’re running out of time. And brains.

Thanks go out to the TSA for checking my suitcase for contraband and leaving a note about it, telling me that they would not be responsible for any damages done while doing their job. Also completely disregarding the sense of invasion afflicted upon yours truly. As you know, dear reader, I do not favor borders. In my opinion, the divides between nations, creeds, races and the like should not be enforced but celebrated with open minds, hearts and arms. (Looking at you, one-percenter)

So while it’s totally unrelated and I’m horrifically disgusted by the tearing down of historical artifacts in the Middle East in the abuse of religion (the latter being a waste of intellect anywhere at any time, anyway) I am studying ancient crafts and mathematical arts from mentioned region and paint geometrically inspired. Since I travel with an array of art materials always foraging wherever I go, some of those (beware of implied irony: very small containers of very suspicious liquids) probably were flagged in the x-ray.

The language of the TSA note is as passive aggressively daunting as anything anyone entering the US through the hands of the Homeland Security would ever experience. To assuage the asperity of that I chose to re-appropriate it. Cut it up to find the true message within their text. The result feels a little like a prayer, a polite request, doesn’t it?

To sincerely feel free
please appreciate
however unable

if you have the contents
necessary
to open this process
please do this.

your next questions
and your suggestions
break the locks on your
understanding

forced to Center:
on how to protect you
from this

your part of Time

…

 

Triptych patterns in progress and at the same time. Islamic geometry to the background noises of Syrian conflict and western ignorance. Sighs have been heard.

↓ 3 works in progress, 600 x 800 mm, mixed media on MDF.

… it’s done.

↓ ”Time Marks The Spots”, 540 x 600 mm, mixed media on paper.

(Listening for patterns on “Skeleton Tree” while randomly creating patterns that might lead to some kind of recognition of unknown knowns of coded broken structures. Or not, doesn’t matter, that’s not the goal. Much like abandoning a blind straight path in favor of the next bend in the river and what’s behind it. Why “time …?” asks the reader with wet feet. Because it has to start somewhere; or end? Because it’s not linear, really? … nah … I’m over it. But please, look it up)

Works in rapid progression. Right now. And there … now. No sooner or later.

↓ ”Time Marks The Spots”, 540 x 600 mm, mixed media on paper.

↓ ”Tall As Sin”,  mixed media on paper(bag).

↓ Untitled,  mixed media on paper.

↓ Untitled,  mixed media on cardboard.

Some more harvest

↓ ”Face” or “Border line”,  mixed media on paper.

↓ Untitled,  mixed media on cardboard.

↓ ”Penta”,  mixed media on paper.

↓ ”Step up”,  mixed media on paper.

↓ ”Bond”,  mixed media on paper.

↓ work in progress, (600 x 800 mm), mixed media on MDF.

↓ work in progress, (600 x 800 mm), mixed media on MDF.

↓ work in progress, (600 x 800 mm), mixed media on MDF.

Some harvest

↓ ”1 for 1” or “Fork by fork”, (? x ? mm + ? x ? mm), mixed media on cardboard.

↓ “Blind anticipation”, (600 x 400 mm), mixed media on MDF.

↓ Untitled work in progress, (332 x 494 mm), mixed media on paper.

What you buy does not make who you are. You are what you digest. Now take out the trash, please.

↓ ”In is as far as Out, #2” or “Burden, #2”, (290 x 270 mm + 290 x 280 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

A sequel to the former piece on the same subject. The correlations to world events are hard to digest. But in short: it all goes to shit. Or rather merde. 

↓ ”Collective Narcissism” or “Map of Denmark, 2015.”, (876 x 617 mm), mixed media on paper.I can be quite binary in expressing my world views and I apologise if I’ve ever offended you. Unless you are one of those  homophobic, xenophobic, bigoted, ethnocentric, racist ass-wipe-danes who thinks it’s ok to stand on a highway bridge, spitting at Syrian refugee families, walking (walking!) as fast as possible through tribal denmark, just to seek asylum in Sweden because petty denmark certainly is not a friendly place for people of colour, traumatized by civil war. Then you have my full scorn. 

↓ work in progress, (155 x 254 mm + 155 x 254 mm), acrylics on crescent board.

Spilling some beans here I guess. Another digestion reference?

↓ work in progress, (267 x 288 mm + 267 x 288 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

Buy one, somebody else gets one free. Charity through consumerism. Still wrapping my head around that.

↓ work in progress, (287 x 314 mm + 289 x 307 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

No comment. But yes, my media is a cat-litter box. Yet another digestion reference. What goes in must come out and go somewhere. Right? 

↓work in progress, (⌀355 mm + ⌀280 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

Round formats. And I have no idea what to do about that. I mean, whats up or down here? Really?

Actually, refugees don’t flee in order to get in. They come here, because they have to get out.

↓ ”In is as far as Out” or “Burden”, (435 x 230 mm + 240 x 335 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

On that note it’s important to keep in mind: borders between our nations are not constructs designed to keep aliens out either. They are put in place to keep you, me and also the xenophobes in, in check, in line, from interfering, from conferring.

Oh home, sweet home, I wrote you a poem. The dearest reader must excuse the danish, and find an approximated translation below. The references to both national anthems and native pop songs probably don’t come through to a non-dane and I apologise for that. In regards to the issue at hand I think you must count yourself happy. Leave it to the danes to be sorry. (though I am sure that these days you can find your own local predicaments that hopefully are handled more gracefully)

Åh (komma) danmark
Din skede er rummelig (komma) men gold
Til dem der står dér (komma) ude
Og banker på
Siger du (kolon)
Knep dig selv (komma)
Skridt for skridt

Prygl (udeladelsesprikker)
Grænseløs kærlighed
(Tankestreg)
Tandløs dolk
Spytklat (lighedstegn)
Sneglespor
Motorvej
Urhav

Oversvøm
Bakke (komma) dal
Afkørsel
Afskårne, omskåret
Sønner i krig (komma)
Slik dig om munden
Sønner fra krig (udeladelsesprikker)
Lukket land (komma)
Ørken (skråstreg) våde drømme
Luftspejl
Bølgen blå

Oh (comma) Denmark
Your snatch is spacious (comma) but barren
To those who’re (comma) out there
Knocking
You say (colon)
Go fuck yourself (comma)
Step by step

Thrash (ellipsis)
Borderless love
(Dash)
Toothless dagger
Glob of spit (equal sign)
Snail’s trail
Freeway
Primordial sea

Submerge
Hill (comma) valley
Exit
Cut off, circumcised
Sons to war (comma)
Lick your lips
Sons from war (omission dots)
Closed Country (comma)
Desert (slash) wet dreams
Mirage
The blue wave

—
Colon-hyphen-start-parenthesis

Frankly and furthermore, here’s an estimation on the state of our collective being, disguised as an homage to hard sci-fi. Also: more progress to that other piece and some film festival posters.

↓ ”Rhett/Scarlett” or “Road to Extinction”, (430 x 270 mm + 245 x 340 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

It started with a ladder, or rather with a vision of a ladder, or more precisely, depending of course on where in the process you believe associative lines of haphazardly firing axons can coalesce into ideas worthy of sticking to the inside of one’s skull, a fantasy of a DNA helix unfurling into a rigid ladder, left with one rail bent out of shape as if it’s rubber or maybe even warped by time, evidently proposing the question: what does that make our ladder; this symbol of progress, Jacobean ascension, abysmal descent, staggered regression, communication between higher and lower psyche, the connection between body and mind, self and ego? Well, here it made for an image worth exploring for a minute and before you knew it, and least of all my own consciousness knowing of it, these roaming hands of mine drew in a few overlapping circles,  suggesting them to be planetary objects held in place by universal gravitational forces and/or ink on a nebulous space of paint splattered, discarded pieces of cheap cardboard (one from a not so innovatively designed packaging holding a somewhat sophisticated designer toaster, the other intended to be a short-lived partition or filler between fragile and empty glass bottles) making me go “hm” and “oh” to a point where I liked where we were going, me and my brain, together pushing more towards an interpretational regimen as opposed to just spilling our babbling beans, thinking “here’s a possible commentary, exploration on the themes of never-ending growth, the incessant urge to reach yet a final frontier never thinking about the bill somebody has to pay at some point”, and a little more meditating on the subject led to the oh so obvious addition of a domino piece, the pips counting three and two, the most sexy and sacred ciphers this side of the galaxy, indicating that behind all this there’s a conduct or code, a cultural key to that particular part of human behaviour. To round out and up that end of the game, there was no other way than to add an obscured text, a secret message (uh!) by the help of a book cipher and since I was already thinking about Arthur’s and Stanley’s thoughts about the same, I used that particular good book to quote a totally different movie classic to word my conclusion to this investigation. To help you just a bit I give you the paragraph you need here:

2001: A Space Odyssey (by Arthur C. Clarke, 1968)
Chapter 1 – The Road to Extinction:
The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.

↓ Untitled work in progress, (600 x 400 mm), mixed media on MDF.

It’s a sprocket. Makes a machine work, like. Somehow it still ended up looking like a flower. Now, we dance.

↓ My contestants in the 2015 Chicago Film Festival Poster Competition, (50 x 70 inches), digital layouts

… and here’s the winner. Congrats!

“Stamen/Anther” is done. So is “Fallopia/Piston Postcards” and maybe that ends the flower paintings. In progress you find a board with a border inspired by Ottoman illumination

↓ ”Stamen/Anther” or “Coming”, (595 x 460 mm), mixed media on MDF.
The stamen is the “male” reproductive organ you commonly find in the middle of a flower surrounding the “female” part: the stigma. At the end of the stamen you find an anther. That is where pollen is produced and eventually discharged from. If you are a flower you want to spread that stuff in order to procreate. To that purpose many flowers use the help of bees and other insects. Doesn’t get any sexier, amirite?

↓ “Fallopia/Piston Postcards” or “Longing”, (125 ≈ 127 x 190≈ 245 mm), mixed media on cardboard.

The second piece from the top actually travelled the atlantic by mail twice before this piece was complete. A Fallopia is a vine many consider an invasive weed. It has an unrelenting urge to cover all and everything with itself. A piston serves only one purpose: to compress, to be driven, to drive and to never ever stop. Unless you run out of juices to combust. Then you need to take a nap.

↓ Untitled work in progress, (600 x 400 mm), mixed media on MDF.
Ottoman illuminations surround words of scripture or the like. The Ottoman empire is now Turkey. Turkey borders Syria. Syria has effectively ceased to be a healthy society. Nothing holy going on in there.