1987-1989
Experimental work with Bleach and Perfume
New York City
In 1987, eighteen months after the first show at VoxPopuli/ American Fine Arts Co., I decided to end the making of the "dot"
paintings. I was (quite naively) surprised to find how quickly new and interesting things were "used up" inside the New York art world.
Tiring of the all the same groupings, and of the now rampant imitators,
filling the East Village galleries I chose to use my next exhibition at the gallery as a way to "kill" the old process and move forward.
I included both some of the "dot" paintings, but put them next to
two new works that used perfume as a paint substitute. I believed that
once I had stopped using fluorescent paint it would be philosophically "wrong" to then use "regular" paint again. In addition I wanted some way to mark the death of a now vanished body of work, and the trace existence of that same belief system. The use of perfume became a way to do both. It was at once a marker for absence, but also an aggressive marking of the space that exists (both literally and figuratively) around that art object.
Original gallery statement American Fine Arts Co. 1987
Installation view American Fine Arts Co.
511 E. 6th St., East village, New York City
Perfume Paintings Untitled: ( Obsession) left, ( L'Air du Temps) right
1987
Experimental work with Bleach and Perfume
New York City
In 1987, eighteen months after the first show at VoxPopuli/ American Fine Arts Co., I decided to end the making of the "dot"
paintings. I was (quite naively) surprised to find how quickly new and interesting things were "used up" inside the New York art world.
Tiring of the all the same groupings, and of the now rampant imitators,
filling the East Village galleries I chose to use my next exhibition at the gallery as a way to "kill" the old process and move forward.
I included both some of the "dot" paintings, but put them next to
two new works that used perfume as a paint substitute. I believed that
once I had stopped using fluorescent paint it would be philosophically "wrong" to then use "regular" paint again. In addition I wanted some way to mark the death of a now vanished body of work, and the trace existence of that same belief system. The use of perfume became a way to do both. It was at once a marker for absence, but also an aggressive marking of the space that exists (both literally and figuratively) around that art object.
Original gallery statement American Fine Arts Co. 1987
Installation view American Fine Arts Co.
511 E. 6th St., East village, New York City
Perfume Paintings Untitled: ( Obsession) left, ( L'Air du Temps) right
1987
Perfume Painting: Untitled (Obsession)
perfume on linen
60" x 48"
1987
Perfume Painting: Untitled (L'Air du Temps)
perfume on linen
60" x 48"
1987
The months leading up to this exhibition, and the two years following (1987- 1989) were spent experimenting with the use of bleach, and perfume as new substitutes for paint. Bleach was a means for me to "scrub" clean the space of the older work, and perfume was a way to mark it's absence, both materials led me to now think of the idea of a painting as a site. Borrowed directly from artist Robert Smithson's term for the space in which an art work resides, it reframes the object as both the physical thing, and the socio/political system that the art work moves through.
Perfume Site: Untitled ( Perfume Rundown)
Perfume on unprimed linen left in abandoned building in the East Village
1987
Perfume Site: Untitled (Roof Pour)
Perfume on abandoned building rooftop
East Village, New York City
1987
Perfume Site: Untitled (Stairway)
Perfume in a building stairway
Brooklyn, New York City
1987
Perfume Site: Untitled (Highway)
Perfume produced from a car battery attached to
a perfume vaporizer near a Highway underpass
Brooklyn, New York City
1987
Perfume Site: Untitled (Trench)
Perfume inserted into a hand dug trench
in an abandoned lot in East Village near Ave. D
@ 8' x 1'
New York City
1988
Perfume Site: Untitled (Trench) detail
Perfume Site: Untitled (Gallery)
Perfume dispersed through a gallery ventilation duct
during an exhibition of my paintings
East Village, New York City
1988
Statistical Pour: Untitled (Glue Pour #3)
Bleach and glue on linen
60" x 48"
1987
View other early Bleach works 1987-1989 >