Andrew Ellis Johnson

Proposal for Brewhouse SPACE 101:

Diverse and Unified

Contemplating "Community" in the Sexual Minorities Movement September 6 - 22, 1996.

 

There is no community, only the unification of the undifferentiated.  The communal sanctuary exists only for you.  I, however desired, am not you.  I, cognizant of my individual experience, remain eternally fragmented from and fractured within your body social.  I, rich and varied in my being, remain cut off from and cut up within my body proper.  The alliances I spawn, the lines I find, the relations I am caught up with are perpetually subject to degenerate, snap and rot.  This for me, for me, alone. 

 

Transference is never complete.  I do not attempt to speak for you, for us.  We fail as subject.  We long ceased as object.  We were always impossible.  Only the flow and undertow made the light of our appearance seem otherwise to the unimmersed.

There is no community, only groups in my absence complete, relations elsewhere replete, filiation unheld.  This for me, for me, alone.

 

I do not wish to disturb the sediment.  Whose blood elates me, clinically,

decanting the hour from the weak? 

 

I do not want you near me, you, who are not me.  I do not want your oxygenated helplessness.  I want neither will nor words.  I do not want you near me, you, who are not me.

 

I am not of your school, you who feed on me now.  I see, saw myself elsewhere, above and below, swimming after those who floated before.

 

My mouth shuts to nothing.  Taste solely, slowly, dissolves. 

 

My breath  is purged of swollen flesh.

 

What do you know of me now, you who bated me?

What do you remember of me now, you who cleaned me?

What do you smell of me now, you who consumed me?

Where do you find me now, you allured?

 

•           •           •           •           •           •           •           •           •           •           •           •          

 

The preceding was written by one of the scores of fish represented in "Birds gotta fly", a vertical triptych panel painting which I propose for the exhibition Diverse and Unified  (see accompanying sketch of "Birds gotta fly").  The panels are each 48" x 80" and hung with ample space below and between them taking full advantage of the ceiling height of Space 101.  The central image of the upper and lower panels is of an androgynous (male) nude suspended in a highly contrasting field.  The field, as all figures represented therein, is depicted with mimetic clarity yet remains ambiguous.  A liquescent or ethereal environment is equally plausible.  The figures mirror each other but are not identical.  Absorbed in the self or yearning for the unreachable other, the poses fluctuate between  tragic supplication and emergent liberation.  The life size scale of the figures, heroic height of the combined panels,  mannerist mode, and deep, somber palette heighten the vulnerability and Eros of the subject(s).  Power is suppressed beneath a delicate veneer. All conspire to sequester our sympathies within an unrelenting, unrepentant romanticism. 

Enter the buoyant fish.  Although executed credibly with attention to particular personalities, they are not to be believed.  Their designs and colors rupture the previous laconic rapture.  Their spatial configurations challenge our pictorial stability. Assumptions of orientation freely float away.  Pathos is complicated by the exuberance of patterns.  Individually, they pose a comical critical commentary against a central subject.  They suck, tug at and attach themselves to extremities.  Healing or devouring, they ornament peripherally.   Collectively, their electronic pitch and the magnitude of their numbers threatens to overwhelm the main attraction. Taken en masse, the tenor of the whole is turned over.

 

Thus, the camps are traditionally delineated.

Thus, anthropocentrically we read the Lumpenproletariat's struggle.

Thus, we pay no heed to a fish's proclamation.

 

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The two works represented in the ten slides submitted may also be considered for this exhibition. They can upon request have similar statements prepared for them.  These two recent large scale paintings develop analogous themes to those indicated in the "Birds gotta fly" proposal. 

 

Slide 1 "All in Good Time"  1996 oil and acrylic on canvas  96" X 96"

                        Slides 2-8 are of details of "All in Good Time" submitted as testament of                 its narrative complication. 

Slide 2             "Living up to one's name"

Slide 3             "Mount and mascot"

Slide 4             "Proper perspective"

Slide 5             "Disciples"

Slide 6             "Of a feather"

Slide 7             "The Promise"

Slide 8             "The Score"

Slide 9             "The Unspoken"  1995 acrylic on canvas 96" X 96"

                        The subject is ostensibly close to "Birds gotta fly" though its mode of                                         representation is transparently calligraphic.

Slide 10           Detail from "The Unspoken".