Random Studies (bouncing rasping) Painting

The decision maker of randomness. It undermines the belief that an artist uses authorial intent to determine each part of an artwork. My works present a separation between an artist’s control and an artwork by letting chance mostly decide the painting process. Sensuous decisions and choices add relatively little to the painting process. A work of art is regarded as attached very closely to the artist’s identity. Painting especially is often understood as an expression of an artist’s volatile emotional state or a result of intense aesthetic deliberation. My practices for a painting aim to challenge this myth of artistic creation. There are some principles for my process. First, I decide ‘not to make decisions’ or as few as I can. Second, I use ‘arbitrary’ numbers and effects to avoid an ‘arbitrary’ link between my ego and the work. Third, the result can be beautiful, but the beauty is not the end of the process. Fourth, I accept that the system is imperfect; there will be contradictions, limitations, and lapses. I do not want to trap the works in a perfect, closed loop of form and intent. Last, the rules should be able to operate without the artist. Chance operates in my work as random numbers, irregular shapes and contingent effects relying on the intrinsic nature of my material. For example, in some early works, I cut polygons out of a contact paper. The shapes were decided by random numbers, I threw the shapes down on the canvas, spray painted the surface, the polygons created negative spaces on the canvas. More recently, I dyed the canvas with pigments of colors chosen blinded, throwing down the torn paper on it, painting over the surface, spraying through the blank space of the torn paper. In this way, all of paintings have a sort of procedure, but it is not necessarily mathematical or geometric. By seeking objective rules and procedures, I want to state that art should not be a mythical exaltation of the individual, but be a liberation from one’s ego. I consider myself a generator of algorithms and performer of the rules. It might be seen as if I have all control over the paintings, but once an algorithm is set up, anyone can realize it without skillful hands or delicate sensibilities to colors and forms. The rules, randomness, forms and colors exist outside of an artist.