A Platypus Glows Under Backlight

The title of this show paraphrases the headline of a recent New York Times article describing a new discovery about one of the more unlikely creatures on our planet, the platypus. An animal assemblage of sorts, it’s seemingly part duck, part beaver, and part reptile. It’s a mammal, but lays eggs. It has venom. And now it’s known to glow fluorescent, possibly, beautifully, for no reason at all.

The possession of these seemingly contradictory traits along with this newfound surface attribute, which has yet to be codified into purpose, metaphorically describe much of what I’ve been thinking about in making this show. Before and now, the paintings revolve around surface: how surfaces are read perceptually but also socially, as a text. This show focuses specifically on the role of written text as external signage or as inscribed layers beneath veneers, obscured but still affecting. It considers our reliance on text to summarize and solidify at the risk of eliminating complexity and nuance. Embedded in this process is the question: what if these texts were taken apart and then rewritten in other visual forms, or with another choreography? Perhaps they could give way to a looser, more generative alphabet: a concrete script would become a calligraphic pattern, still telling but more open, expanding further into an array of potential logics without set conclusions.