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| '[dc]circuit 01/Sartre', Acrylics, Mixed Media & Paper Collage on Panel, 600 mm x 400 mm, 2026 |
For some months, I've been working simultaneously on five panels, designed to be viewed together as a set. All five are now finished to the same level, so it's finally time to go public with them. Here's the first, entitled, '[dc]circuit 01/Sartre.' I'll admit that's a fairly arch title (and possibly a rip-off of the kind of labelling Aphex Twin might employ), but it does offer some clues about what's going on here.
In general aesthetic and overall methodology, these five clearly belong with the other 'Deleuzian Cartography' pieces I've produced in recent times. Hence the initial '[dc]' identifier. In fact they grew out of the 'Deleuzian Cartography 6' panel I completed last summer, with each of the electrical lighting circuit diagrams collected in that piece acting individually as a dominant motif here each time. 'circuit 01 - 05' thus becomes the sub-series identifier for these five panels.
The alternative appelation, '/Sartre', relates to the fact that each of these pieces also alludes to an individual author and/or philosopher of importance to me. All were prominent on my personal reading list duringb the period when these paintings were in progress. Some years back, I produced a series of map-based paintings in which cartographic fragments combined with found texts to signify my physical and mental journeys around my local patch, here in Leicester. Those pieces featured in an exhibition titled 'Mental Mapping' which I shared with Andrew Smith. That title (suggested by Andrew) seemed to describe what I was trying to do very well, and in reality, it still does. My hope is that these more recent cartographic mash-ups are a little more sophisticated in certain ways (albeit, somewhat more restrained), but it's definitely the case that I'm still trying to construct a form of subverted cartography, in synthesis with multiple over-codings of potential meanings/narrative. It seems that the found texts I harvested from the physical environment back then are now replaced by the literary texts I routinely carry around with me these days (usually in anticipation of yet another coffee stop).
Much of the territory I'm obsessively dismantling and reassembling still relates to my local environment, but buried in there are also maps of various locations significant to the five featured writers. As this first one pays homage to Jean-Paul Sartre, the terrain of Leicester's 'everyday' zones become entangled with the street maps of Saint Germain (his intellectual H.Q.) and Le Harvre (as reimagined in his philosophical novel 'Nausea' [1.]).
As far as the circuits themselves are concerned, beyond their obvious geometric/emblematic appeal, they're pretty straightforward signifiers for the various energy flows constituting any urban environment. As such, they could be said to chart the city, just as the maps do. However, given that each diagram relates to a specific LED lighting circuit, perhaps they also hint that all those slightly dog-eared and ring-stained paperbacks are probably the nearest I'll ever get to anything resembling genuine illumination.
There is one other point of note with these five panels, relating to the identifying colours used each time. However, I'll save that insight until the others have revealed themselves. For now, let's just say that the Sartre-related panel was always going to be done in existentialist black(ish), wasn't it?
[1.]: Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Nausea', (Trans. Robert Baldick), London/NYC, Penguin, 1963 (1938).
Sans A.1.
