Drawing I, 2016, single-channel video installation.
In a darkened gallery, the low rumblings of an underwater current continually rise
and fall in a one-minute loop. On the floor, in the center of the gallery, a video is
projected downward onto the surface of a 4x5x2’ platform. As the sound of water
builds, an image of rippling black liquid emerges on the surface of the platform.
Bubbles form and begin to circle (...) The low rumblings of the underwater current
continue to build as small clusters of bubbles spiral on the inky black surface. The
event abruptly shifts. A vortex forms and a drain is revealed as the liquid is voided.
Drawing I fades to a silent blackness, and begins anew (...)
Drawing I conjures up an allusion to hydromancy (the practice of reading
signs in the linear patterns formed by moving bodies of water). Understood
as a form of divination one could interpret this mercurial surface as a sign
of the end of days—or one could qualify it as an articulation of the fears and
anxieties that underscore our current era of rapid technological
advancement, global economic disparity, and looming ecological disaster.
And yet the formation of lines in Drawing I are the result of material forces
that have been set in motion. Thus Drawing I is as much a quasi-charting of
futurity as it is an immanent unfolding suspended in a digital format.