Klexographie, a long-forgotten European
parlor game, is occasionally recalled as the inspiration for a
standardized and generally discredited psychodiagnostic tool,
the Rorschach inkblot tests.
On a superficial level, something about the
organic, bilateral symmetry of those inkblots resonated with
me. I also liked the word “klexography,” a
fake-sounding technical term with a cartoonish ring to it.
But the division of individual klexographs
into equal left and right halves dovetailed with the theme I
wanted to express through this work: a non-partisan, universal
condemnation of bloodshed, from a perspective that could never
belong to the right or the left. Of course, to imagine that
such a motif could ever be politically neutral is the height of
naivete. In fact, these works form
a kind of “Rorschach test” of the viewer’s
politics.
More than anything, this project from the
summer and fall of 2006 was an outgrowth of my dismay and anger
at the state of the world, particularly over the spectacular
failure of American foreign policy. It’s not in my nature
to make didactic artwork, but producing these pieces felt like
an act of compulsion and catharsis — a bloody, primal
scream.
Later pieces in the Klexography Project
drifted toward commentary on the divided politics of the U.S.
itself, particularly as the 2006 elections unfolded; those
works are among the ones posted here, here and here. The series
continues in 2007 as an ongoing response to current events in
America and abroad.
The process of creating this work took me
back to the earliest tactics I’d employed as an artist:
making loose abstractions using found paint (in this case, a
hand-me-down can of red latex wall paint) on whatever paper was
at hand. But by assembling these pieces into larger
installations, they also echoed visual motifs I’ve
employed in recent years: repetition and variation, randomness
and fragmentation, structure and containment, material
simplicity and metaphoric complexity.
