M.A. Greenstein's essay for 1994's solo show at Space Gallery in Chicago:
CRYPTOLOGIST: What's that knotty veneer covering the sun?
PAINTER: What sun? That's not a sun.
CRYPTOLOGIST: Looks like a deadly snare to me.
PAINTER: Decode! Decode!
The painter transforms the surface to seek the unknowable. The cryptologist deciphers the surface to grasp the unkown. The surface is inexhaustible.
(Italo Calvino)
Thinking of recent discussions on DNA coding, Steven LaRose rhetorically asks: "Can we conceive of the very thing that permits us to conceive?" "Can we see the text that creates us?" The artist thus poses a simple though ancient epistemological question: Can the mind (now the brain) know itself? Can we use the (rational) signs of consciousness to understand that which makes us conscious?
Early twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro likens the self-reflexive inquiry into human knowledge to one asking, "Can a head look for its head?" "Can a sword cut itself?" In such cases, says Nishida, the rational effort is fruitless, the challenge misguided.
Now, after centuries of examining how, and why, we know what we know, contemporary philosopher, scientist and artist find accord in accepting the cryptological aspect of human knowing. We have only the awesome power to create knowledge by way of signs and symbols. Our knowledge of the world is forever mediated by configurations of intuitive meaning. Meaning is that matrix of complex and oftentimes, contradictory relations between things and no-things. Relations are more like sticky webs of possibility rather than slick links of power. Relations, painterly and otherwise, are born into absolute nothingness.
CRYPTOLOGIST: What's that knotty veneer covering the sun?
PAINTER: What sun? That's not a sun.
CRYPTOLOGIST: Looks like a deadly snare to me.
PAINTER: Decode! Decode!
The painter transforms the surface to seek the unknowable. The cryptologist deciphers the surface to grasp the unkown. The surface is inexhaustible.
(Italo Calvino)
Thinking of recent discussions on DNA coding, Steven LaRose rhetorically asks: "Can we conceive of the very thing that permits us to conceive?" "Can we see the text that creates us?" The artist thus poses a simple though ancient epistemological question: Can the mind (now the brain) know itself? Can we use the (rational) signs of consciousness to understand that which makes us conscious?
Early twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro likens the self-reflexive inquiry into human knowledge to one asking, "Can a head look for its head?" "Can a sword cut itself?" In such cases, says Nishida, the rational effort is fruitless, the challenge misguided.
Now, after centuries of examining how, and why, we know what we know, contemporary philosopher, scientist and artist find accord in accepting the cryptological aspect of human knowing. We have only the awesome power to create knowledge by way of signs and symbols. Our knowledge of the world is forever mediated by configurations of intuitive meaning. Meaning is that matrix of complex and oftentimes, contradictory relations between things and no-things. Relations are more like sticky webs of possibility rather than slick links of power. Relations, painterly and otherwise, are born into absolute nothingness.
