on the invisible


we have no foothold on the invisible.

thermochemical change was the catalyst
that drove the creation of my extended
series of thermogenic drawings. to make
one, focused heat or a transient heat
gradient was applied directly or indirectly
to a very specific formulation of coated
temperature-sensitive paper—in my case,
to vintage facsimile paper, a common
office supply from the earliest days
of modern electronic business
communication.

the chemical responses of these
receptive coatings to subtle or strong,
slow or rapid temperature changes
produce a wide variety of visible
shapes and marks. these marks—
literally superficial burns—are, in
many ways, similar to fingerprints.
they manifest general typologies,
but their specific features do not
fully characterize essential attributes
of their author or reveal all of the
circumstance of their making.

in the spirit of open exploration,
i did not concern myself with discover-
ing how best to control the work.
each drawing was unique; one-of-a-
kind; a singularity; an irreproducible
fugitive in form. like the photograms
i made in the early 1990's, these
thermogenic drawings posed a
forensic challenge to the psycho-
linguistic reference systems we
employ in order to generate private
meaning. or explain things to ourselves.
they insinuated a delay into the process
with which we organize aesthetic,
logical, and interpretive data inside
a language of form.

oakland, california   |    june 2006  (rev. 05.23)