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This work is an installation of roughly three components, all suggestive of creative processes which include both accumulation and abandonment. These three groups, which differ but share overlapping concerns, are the Heap paintings, the Cake paintings and the sculptural/sound installation titled Good Times/Bad Times.
The Heap paintings distill notions of the disordered interior, which functions as both an image and model for an approach to painting. Similarly, the smaller paintings of cakes draw upon surrealism and it’s mutant offspring, fantasy art, to construct hybrid images which seem on the verge of collapse. All three components explore spaces between high art and low art, effort and abandonment, art historical allusions and popular narratives.
The three groups also share an interest in materiality, and in a visual forming and de-forming which borders on the psychedelic. In terms of narrative, the sound sculpture Good Times/Bad Times is the most labyrinthine. The work evolved out two interests, the first of which was an interest in Robert Morris’ minimalist mirrored works of the mid 60’s. The second interest was a fascination with two—or rather one, song: Cease To Exist by Charles Manson (who at that time was a burgeoning folk/pop singer) and Never Learn Not To Love by the Beach Boys. Despite their difffering titles (which appear as inversions of one another) the two songs are actually the same song, having been first written and recorded by Manson and then borrowed, rewritten, re-recorded, and finally renamed by The Beach Boys. The two recordings have their own history and audio-materiality (one “dirty” and lo-fi, the other rich and sweetly sacharine), which alter the reception of the paintings.
Mark Neufeld 2005 (revised 2006)