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The mark is the simplest representation of human intelligence, it is the shared tool of all human production; the figure of our diagrams, designs and words. It shares its origin with the beginning of humanity’s memory. The difference between black and white reveals the written word. The line the pen makes generally disappears because it is only the vehicle for the message. The pen makes a form or concept without body; it is only a mediator or interface of information. I consider my use of black ink on the white paper as a way to almost write my drawings, and to make them as minimally physical as possible. The ideas exist without body. |
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Kacy Maddux
The mark is the simplest representation of human intelligence, it is the shared tool of all human production; the figure of our diagrams, designs and words. It shares its origin with the beginning of humanity’s memory. The difference between black and white reveals the written word. The line the pen makes generally disappears because it is only the vehicle for the message. The pen makes a form or concept without body; it is only a mediator or interface of information. I consider my use of black ink on the white paper as a way to almost write my drawings, and to make them as minimally physical as possible. The ideas exist without body. I make diagrams with archetypal, geometric, scientific and personal symbols, which construct networks of explanations and descriptions of basic human conflict on various levels. The information is organized so that the drawing is mainly read in the relationships between the references, as symbolic constellations.
Each finished drawing is a product of hundreds of previous, smaller research drawings. The research drawing is used to develop the language on a smaller, piece-by-piece basis, to form compound symbols and eventually networks. The process is cumulative. The relationship between an individual’s concept of totality and the biological necessity of division within our bodies is my most predominant conceptual interest. There is a moment immediately after conception when one exists as a single cell; then one divides. Eventually, a child splits from her mother. One seeks a partner to be a half of. The body is bilaterally symmetrical, split down the middle. The mind is then divided in half again, with a part of the old, and the newer. This brain is predetermined, at least partially by the chain of DNA. There is no single site of human identity. The most concrete, the body seems to be even more foreign than the random string of letters that makes one’s name. The seat of the individual’s conscious life lies in the dumb box of the skull, the design of which is more deliberate than the individual life within it. The body, the mind, the brain, the soul, the sex, the afterlife and all other personal myths and priorities within each of us reject appearances of division of the self. One cannot emotionally believe or visualize themselves to be a collection of pieces, like cells; even while, within the private emotional space of the mind, one cannot locate a feeling of total cohesion of self. There is a growing gap between the individual’s understanding of herself as a physical form and an intellectual actor. Technological advances like virtual reality, the genome project and mind-altering drugs have beheaded the body or disembodied the brain. One is now aware and self-conscious of her divided form, an abstract intellect attached to an obsolete muscle, a knot of conflict.
