REPURPOSING GLYPHS
This series of paintings, extends outward from the Configuring Escutcheon works. These paintings differ in several ways: they are much more planned out through drawings and require a lot of background research on differing forms of heraldic uses of imagery and escutcheon, along with research into the differing representations that particular glyphs have within economics, finance mathematics and statistics. Each of these disciplines is centrally concerned with the movement or measurement of financial capital. They each use glyphs through the same logic that heraldic designs were given signification. This logic is backgrounded by the activity of artists, whose innovations in symbolism and representation enabled heraldry to develop using the same signification process, qua Sassure & Barthes. The paintings, which are currently in process, meditate upon the plutocratic end-goals of repurposing Greek glyphs with complex finance & mathematical definition. Employing such logic inherits the will to provide an obfuscating, highly specialized yet functional logic to a public that will be deterred from comprehension just by the density of such arcane posturing. I am not blind to the high irony that such is the circumstance of contemporary art within society today. Clearly, this form of interplay is intended to support the continuation of capitalistic impulses and even posit them intrinsic to social cohesion. I have been using these same glyphs within my paintings, and combining them to form non-sense titles for the works, as can be seen in the example included here. These works also employ elements of heraldry, such as the escutcheon shapes used for familial identification and verification that ranged from legal documents (via a seal) through to military forces (such as physical shields). Color is important and specific in this regard, as is material. I am using mostly found or discarded plywood to make these paintings, as it helps to distance the paintings from the tradition it is sited within.
The moment of specialism, a token of modernism, has produced an environment where understanding is itself a form of property, precisely because the complexity grafted onto the glyph has become what we can think of as the contemporary arcane. This very process has been mirrored in art, and there is a critique available here too but it is important to remember that this process of encoding meaning is actually originally taken from art. Some of the very first paintings were adorned with symbols that had great devotional meaning. Through such combinations of symbols more complex meanings were pronounced, and the complexities referred to earlier, finally found a form.
These paintings have been made with mostly found (repurposed) wood; most of them are approximately 36" sq- and are made with acrylic paint, ink and various acrylic media.
These paintings use the visual languages of heraldry and symbolism as a kind of frame, within which I am employing glyphs taken from Greek and re-purposed within economics & finance math. I am quite captivated by escutcheon and other framing devices found in heraldic forms, mainly for their immediacy, endurance and availability to interpretation. Escutcheon were made to create identity, to protect wealth, and in this way, heraldic forms became synonymous with the protection of the valuation of honor, which
became inextricable from wealth. My aim is not to re-present heraldic and honorific images but to adopt the structure of this long-established visual language to access a critique of the
hyper-specialization of finance and economics. Statistics and finance math is a language that is largely inaccessible yet forms the basis for the financial models used to pressurize, cajole, and persuade decisions that propel capital, and create norms.
The moment of specialism, a token of modernism, has produced an environment where understanding is itself a form of property, precisely because the complexity grafted onto the glyph has become what we can think of as the contemporary arcane. This very process has been mirrored in art, and there is a critique available here too but it is important to remember that this process of encoding meaning is actually originally taken from art. Some of the very
first paintings were adorned with symbols that had great devotional meaning. Through such combinations of symbols more complex meanings were pronounced, and the complexities referred to earlier, finally found a form.
These paintings have been made with mostly found (repurposed) wood; most of them are approximately 36" sq- 48"sq.; and are made with acrylic paint, ink and various acrylic medi
a.
