Simone Subal Gallery. 131 Bowery, 2 nd floor, New York NY / / / T:

Transcription

1 Architectural Digest, April 2014

2 Architectural Digest, April 2014

3 Architectural Digest, April 2014

4 Architectural Digest, April 2014

5 Architectural Digest, April 2014

6 Architectural Digest, April 2014

7 Brian O Doherty A consistent theme running through the multiform works of Brian O Doherty (formerly Patrick Ireland) has been language and speech. The following pages include a typewritten work from 1967 in which sets of the letter M, denoted (in the code used by O Doherty) by a single slanting stroke, /, are repeated with varying intervals. The result is a droning, gapped monotone mmmm m... mmmmm mmm... mm, etc. This is followed by two pages from his recent novel, The Crossdresser s Secret (2014), dealing with similar concerns repetition, the nature and definition of categories, mathematics, time and the physiology of perception as experienced (suffered?) by one of his protagonists. Three of O Doherty s most recent drawings, Rotating Vowels, begin and conclude this project. In the 8thcentury Irish language code (Ogham), used by the artist for over 40 years, the broad and slender vowels (AOU, EI) are denoted by one (A) to five (I) strokes. Here the single strokes are turned into arcs and color coded, which distantly relates them to Rimbaud s Voyelles, though, says the artist, Why he made A black I ll never understand. 128 MARCH 2014 Mary Josephson PORTFOLIO Porfolio flow.indd 128 2/5/14 6:27 PM

8 Porfolio flow.indd 129 2/5/14 6:27 PM

9 Porfolio flow.indd 130 2/5/14 6:30 PM

10 Porfolio flow.indd 131 2/5/14 6:32 PM

11 A scatter of papers on the floor between the windows was easier to categorize, though the category, as with all my father s papers, was impure. I spread these papers on a table I had brought in. They were filled with diagrams, equations, mathematical notations. Again there were orders: Make a study of ellipses. D Alembert is wrong. Some were Euclidian propositions. He had a particular liking for the pons asinorum, which he must have remembered from schoolboy lessons. Its proof was repeated several times, once accompanied by badly drawn animals crossing a bridge. He loved numbers, and had developed several series in various simple and geometric progressions. Occasionally he pursued them through page after closely written page, increasing in complexity and velocity. On one page a pyramid of numbers increased regularly etc. This sequence was continued down the page, the writing getting smaller and smaller to fit on the page, the numbers at the bottom so minute as to be unreadable. This explained the magnifying glass on the desk. Other progressions continued indefinitely, consuming as many as a hundred pages. This kind of repetition could break into any of his tasks, even when writing a coherent sentence. One word, say, cask, would detain him and be repeated for several pages before taking up the sense again. The image of this illness if it was an illness was his endless division of pi, accompanied by circles within circles with numerous diameters. After several hundred decimals, he concluded this exercise with Wallis s symbol for infinity, an eight lying on its side. A kind of agony arose from 303 BOD_Crossdressers_Secret_layout_13.indd 3 1/9/14 12:24 PM Porfolio flow.indd 132 2/5/14 6:32 PM

12 these pages. He simply did not know when to stop, a notion painfully parodied in one folio, which repeated fin, fin, fin, fin, fin, fin, fin, fin, fin, fin. Was he was trying to stop a mathematical leak into infinity? Indeed infinity hovered over his diagrams, equations, and repetitions, the latter consuming considerable stretches of time. Might these repetitions not be punishing obsessions but restful culs-de-sac in which time gathered and congealed? Each repetition tried to stop time by exactly reproducing the moment before, while anticipating the moment after. Perhaps he did not believe he was wasting time, though time was in fact wasting him. How to categorize this mixture of logic and madness? Some pages were filled with more schoolboy problems for example: Two coaches, A and B, starting at different speeds and departure times from the same point to the same destination. Which would arrive before the other? BOD_Crossdressers_Secret_layout_13.indd /9/14 12:24 PM Porfolio flow.indd 133 2/5/14 6:32 PM

13 134 MARCH 2014 PORTFOLIO Porfolio flow.indd 134 2/5/14 6:32 PM

14 BRIAN O DOHERTY ART IN AMERICA 135 Porfolio flow.indd 135 2/5/14 6:33 PM