I WILL BE WATCHING YOU 3. Painting

nspired by Portrait de Mlle Aline Léon 1887 by Aimé Nicolas Morot. This series of work is exploring the relationship between repetition and uniqueness. In this series of 4 (maybe more to come) I am trying to study the unique language of repetition in itself, of copying, and exposing its poetry and lyricism in a language of repetition, which draws on the philosophical work of Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida. Repetition in art implies the use of two or more of the same or similar elements such as colours, shapes, or lines. Rhythm is one of the methods of repetition used to create space between elements and to create a feeling of rhythm or movement in the user. The object of repetition deceives because it repeats but is never redundant. It remains somewhere between uniqueness and duplication, uncertain of either but certain of itself. On Kawara (1933-2014) was a Japanese conceptual artist who understood the unique value of repetition and whose creative oeuvre - particularly his Date Paintings, I Am Still Alive, and I Woke Up At series - illustrates the repetitious act, exposing of both difference and sameness but refusing to commit to either. Benjamin, in his aim to define the ontology of reproducible media, described uniqueness in art as "identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition." However, reproducibility itself is not the act that destroys the object's uniqueness, rather it is the indifferent mechanical apparatus that endlessly produces the copies. Kawara's approach illustrates reproducibility without the indifferent, Each one of 3000 paintings represents a unique time, place, and object. The repetitious act and particularly the sameness of each painting draw attention to their difference. Difference is entirely represented by the unique object of creation.