Completed Painting: '[dc]circuit 02/Borges'

'[dc]circuit 02/Borges', Acrylics, Mixed Media & Paper Collage on Panel,
600 mm x 600 mm, 2026

Here's the second in my set of five '[dc]circuit' panels. This one is '[dc]circuit 02/Borges' - offering, as it does, some kind of tribute to the literature of Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges. Here the circuit diagram motif, which overlays all five of the '[dc]circuits', becomes entangled with elements of maze-like geometry, which itself emerges from the underlying reconstructed cartography that anchors the set.  Further overarching insights can be gleaned from my post about '[dc]circuit 01'.

Labyrinths are, of course, a recurring motif in the short stories of Borges - not least in 'The  Garden of Forking Paths' [1.], as referenced in thematically consistent Chinese characters here. Indeed, mazes seem to characterise the intellectual convolutions of his fiction perfectly, with its tendency to fold back into itself in preference to supplying any straightforward narrative conclusions. More directly, they are also analogous to the self-contained (and possibly confounding) complexity of the urban environment. Here, along with references to my own familiar terrain in Leicester, the underlying cartography also relates to Buenes Aires and Geneva - the two cities most closely tied to the author's life.

Clearly, the square format used for this panel differs from the rectangular proportions of its predecessor.  Whilst dimensions often correspond across the set, it was never my intention to blindly repeat the same panel format - or even to envisage each piece simply hanging in a level row. In fact, the final arrangement of the set, were they to be exhibited, is one major issue that remains to be settled. In the absence of a convenient empty wall of sufficient size readily to hand, I imagine I'll need to shuffle around some photographic versions - printed at scale, to decide on that. It's quite possible that various alternative arrangements might suggest themselves, rather than a single definitive hang, but there's only one way to find out...

[1.]: Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Garden of Forking Paths', in 'Fictions' (Trans. Andrew Hurley), London/NYC, Penguin, 1941/2000

[Compuesto sin A.I.]

Completed Painting: '[dc]circuit 01/Sartre'

 

'[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.