mind mouth
Forest City Gallery, London CA
October 27 - November 25 2016
Collaboration with Kim Neudorf
“…liquid words have no relation to the “illegible” scribblings of
which modern art has supplied so many variations...for while the
latter are like Rorschach tests inducing the viewer to project
linguistic meanings onto them and thus to rearticulate them,
[liquid words] leave no role to our imagination other than to
complete the work of decomposition…” Yve-Alain Bois
“...alteration...bifurcated from within...points in opposite
directions simultaneously: both downward, to the decomposition of
matter (as in a corpse), and upward, to its transcendence (as in
the passage to an altered, sacred state, as for example, a ghost).”
Rosalind Krauss
Thhhhhfffeeeeetthh / A great bowing forehead heavy with
sleep and stone / CHOP through some liquid wiggling / I just got
there / SERIOUSLY NO / same same develop your head / open mind /
maps to the mouth / tidy silvery meteorite face sheath /
a thinking song to the brain / Snakes taking a nap all up my arms
/ More future selves? / Lumpy floowr brass body and blossom head
are one / Like a hug with the darkness / A direction and
action – go! Yes a thought and a thing – go too! / Hairible hay
very good / V pkeasant We have it by the tail-ear-nose. A word-
string informed by a ceramic pizza. A word chain like a boa
constrictor having eaten a bike-cat-hat-pail-bottle.
mind mouth is a co-existence via alien communiqués a la Dreyfuss
and potatoes. Where the pointing fingers of zombied limbs twitch.
Or where mountainmash meets eyeholes marked as earpaths.
Not a backdrop. More like a layer. Layering in order to build up the
flesh of the thing. The whole thing. The fleshy skin layer? All
sensitive? Or a backdrop TO NOTHING. A thing in itself. Maybe just a
DROP. To work with the building up. Actual thing happening, becoming,
spreading, twisting around right there under the fingers. More a play
with the hell MOUTHYness of it. Like a swear or a made up term. Hell
as mouth as an opening.
Like talents that are USELESSSss. Send message do neat trick, pause,
do you get it do you like it? Send a follow up message trick, pause,
watch the watcher, check their face, do you get it? Do you like it? No?
Yes? Wag wag dance spin.
Or for making strange and complex emotional things take place in a
drawing or an art thing. Like to be able to make something that has
a real sense of humor, a real power. Just a beginning idea as a drawing
to then fill with stuff in a visible way. Like it isn’t visible until
there is something to hold it.
Some kind of search for how to be in the world, something way more
compassionate. Awareness of yourself as WITH and not just AS. No
need to travel from inside to out, it’s already out. Having to make
things up on the go WITH others, against their vibe, their mood,
how you are being received, how they are being with you BACK. A big
improvement. Decide to believe. “I want to believe” says Mulder.
Something that is on the outside, because you are never in a bubble,
it always has to do with SOMETHING. Or someone! Closes the gap, creates
a tangible, tacky, textured tangibility between the surfaces of you and...
it, getting close and getting your face in its face. Intuiting the next
shape to make on this big sheet of shapes and feeling out…!
A direction and action – go! Yes a thought and a thing – go too!
Yve-Alain Bois, “Liquid Words,” Formless: a user's guide
(New York: Zone Books, 1997) 129.
Rosalind Krauss, “Olympia,” Formless: a user's guide
(New York: Zone Books, 1997) 150.