Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 6'

'Deleuzian Cartography 6', Paper Collage, Acrylics & Mixed Media on Panel,
600 mm x 600 mm, 2025

 

This is the sixth of my ‘Deleuzian Cartography’ mixed media ‘paintings’, and the second to be completed on a panel of these dimensions. My thoughts about scale, as it relates to this imagery, can be read in my last post. Suffice it to say, nothing much has changed in that respect.

Clearly, the prevailing aesthetic of this piece is very similar to that of ‘DC 5’, as are the methods by which it was achieved. It appears that I am once more immersed in one of those series of variations on a theme/vocabulary, to which my work so often defaults. That’s fine - I’m clearly happy working this way and (hopefully) sufficiently aware of the dangers of empty repetition and self-defeating comfort zones to know when a particular well is running dry. 

What has changed in this particular version is the nature of the primary motifs (being those that bob to the surface relatively late in the process of resolving the piece. Instead of some form of architectural schematic, here we have a series of five found LED circuit diagrams. If the perpetual flux of de/reteritorialisation within urban environments is a primary theme of this work, so too is the sense of flowing currents and information streams through which so much of that dynamic is facilitated. Each of the five figures may recall the regular geometry of buildings as described on the map, but clearly the infrastructure they represent is devoted purely to flow and transmission of information/alerts, as coded through the millions of winking LED lights that punctuate our world. In purely formal terms, the lexicon of circuit components also feels like a new addition to the overall vocabulary of the ‘Deleuzian Cartography’ work.

In this context, the small accents of silver which enlivened the almost monochromatic palette of ‘DC 5’ are allowed even freer reign here, (however poorly my photographs may reveal them). Notions of the quicksilver nature of electricity and the metallic glitter of cabling and circuitry seem fairly apposite here. There’s also something very interesting about the way metallics allow a painting to transform its appearance based purely on the incidence of light and the angle of view. I like the idea of inferring the shimmer of screen-based or illuminated imagery in such a pleasingly low-tech manner. In passing, I’m reminded that Jacqueline Humphries produced a  series of silver paintings in the past. Now there’s a thought…

[Written without A.I. - for better or worse]

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 5'

'Deleuzian Cartography 5', Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Panel,
600 mm x 600mm, 2025

As promised, here's the next 'Deleuzian Cartography' painting (can I still accurately describe works like these as 'paintings'? - I'm not sure). This is the first one to expand in scale, and it definitely feels like some kind of escape from the world of tiny pieces I've been inhabiting for rather too long. We're still not exactly talking huge here - this is a standard (for me) square format at dimensions I'd normally think of as 'medium'. Nevertheless, it's definitely pleasing to have a bit more real estate to work with again, and perhaps implies a boost in overall confidence levels too.

Given the cartographic impulses at play in these pieces, scale and expansiveness feel like key issues. As a mapping concept, scale feels fairly straightforward, although we can quickly find ourselves dealing with more the emotional/intuitive aspects of distancing, detail focus, personal relationship to specific terrain etc. In this context, I'd reference the familiar thrill of zooming-in/out in Google Maps, and the instantaneous changes in emotional relationship to territory it affords. I'm also reminded of Borges' very short story, 'On Exactitude in Science' [1.], in which an unnamed Empire produces a 'perfect' map at 1:1 scale, completely covering the terrain with its own representation, and rapidly rendering itself useless in the process. As usual, Borges unlocks a world of philosophical speculation with the most economical of means. A close inspection of my own 'DC' pieces reveals how the collaged/mulched cartographic fragments vary in scale dramatically, indicating the themes of simultaneity and dissolving territorialisation that I've tried to build into them. The intention is definitely not to accurately map things with any degree of overall continuity - exactly the opposite, in fact.

Spatially, it's hardly original to observe that there's only one endless map (ultimately adjusted to wrap around a globe), and a set of arbitrary decisions about how we chop it up. That alone has caused me to speculate what happens as one breaks those boundaries and crosses into the next portion of the chart. Clearly, there's no reasons why any expansion should result in a regular square/rectangular border. Indeed, it feels highly desirable that it shouldn't. To that ends, I've been working for quite a while (under the radar, admittedly,) to produce a variety of paper-based sheets using the same techniques and general aesthetic you see here, but stopping at the point one might term 'backgrounds'. The intention is ultimately to start stitching these together in order to work/map further onto the resulting composites. 

What you see here, then, is a more direct stopgap attempt to increase scale by just building a bigger panel and getting on with it. Any reticence in launching into this had to do with uncertainties over the relative scale of individual marks/motifs and the effect that might have on an overall composition. At this stage, (and relatively modest zoom ratio), it appears that the problems are negligible. Given the found/digitised/highly mediated nature of my source imagery, there's not too much the scaling functions of a photocopier, or Photoshop, or even just an old-school OHP, can't overcome. Also, the degree of all-over 'Pollockisation' effects that seem inevitable as this kind of imagery increases in scale seem both enjoyable and appropriate so far. The often monumental examples of Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, Cy Twombly, etc. would suggest there's a long distance to travel yet in that respect. 

In all honesty, I'm not really sure where all that caution and tentative uncertainty came from of late. However, I do know that if just chopping up larger bits of MDF, embracing risk and accident, and working as quickly as the method allows, are proven ways to break out of that - well then the answer is obvious...

 

[1.]: Jorge Luis Borges, 'On Exactitude in Science' (Trans. Andrew Hurley), From: 'The Aleph', London/NYC, 1949/1999

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 4'

 

'Deleuzian Cartography 4', Paper Collage, Acrylics & Mixed Media on Panel,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

My social media interactions have definitely dwindled in recent months, for a variety of reasons. I've certainly become bored by the sheer admin of it all (all that needless checking several times a day, and the sense of being 'available' at any hour). I've also found myself increasingly reluctant to participate in the perceived degradation of discourse and our 'culture' generally (or at least what I once thought it to be). Simultaneously, I've found myself redirecting my attention back towards more traditional sources of information (long-form music, books - remember them?), and also realising that there is still far too much unread literature, unheard music, and unrealised art activity awaiting me, to waste time feeding vampiric (American) social media platforms. I've only got so many years left to me now, after all - endless vacuous distraction is the last thing I need. 

However, I guess it's important not to totally forget the small ways in which digital conduits may still prove useful/enlightening if rationed and consciously targeted. This blog was only really started as a potential showcase for my own creative endeavours in the first place, and there's no reason why it shouldn't continue to function as such from time to time. Making paintings might feel like a far more rewarding way to spend time than documenting and pontificating about them, but I'm not ready to make my practice a 100% inward-looking/onanistic undertaking quite yet.

In the light of which, here's a little painting that fell through the publicity cracks when I completed it a few months back. It's the fourth of the small 'Deleuzian Cartography' panels produced with some enthusiasm/energy, during the last weeks of 2024. In general terms, it certainly shares a common aesthetic and set of concerns with the previous three. However, this one perhaps feels a little cruder/more rapid in its execution. That probably reflects my desire to avoid mere repetition and also the fact that this one 'fought back a bit'. The version you see here was arrived at fairly quickly after an extended period of flailing and I was satisfied to simply leave things be, rather than pursuing further unnecessary refinement. 

Since completing this one, I've been working consistently with a view to exploring the same visual vocabulary of these 'Deleuzian Cartography' pieces on a larger scale. Much of that time has been spent preparing raw materials with a more composite, pieced-together approach in mind. More directly, there are also two newly-completed panels that prove that sometimes the thing to do is to just make a bigger panel and get on with it, without wasting time anticipating the potential problems. I'll try to be a bit more proactive and timely about revealing them...

S.I.T.E. (Midlands Chapter): Location Re-Port 1.5 (M) - Case Closed

 

All Original Images: West Leicester, April 2025

In the light of the transformations documented in this bulletin, we have concluded that this particular site no longer remains viable as a potential portal. It appears that any hopes of meaningful egress here are now negligible at best.  

As a result, the case is now officially closed.

N.B: The whereabouts and current status of the field agent originally assigned to this case remain unknown. Unfortunately, the organisation lacks the resources to carry out a proper investigation into the matter. We therefore appeal for any relevant information which may emerge in the future. Anyone able to shed light on the disappearance should contact the organisation via the usual channels. Thank you.

All Photo-Manipulations: April 2025

https://hughmarwood.blogspot.com/2021/01/location-re-port-11.html

https://hughmarwood.blogspot.com/2021/08/site-midlands-chapter-location-re-port.html

https://hughmarwood.blogspot.com/2021/09/site-midlands-chapter-location-re-port.html

https://hughmarwood.blogspot.com/2022/09/site-midlands-chapter-location-re-port.html

https://hughmarwood.blogspot.com/2022/10/site-midlands-chapter-location-re-port.html

Ex_ist 3 [Beer & Now]

All images: West Leicester, March 2025

“Now there are objects everywhere like this glass of beer, here on the table. When I see it, I feel like saying: ‘Pax, I’m not playing any more.’ I realise perfectly well that I have gone too far. I don’t suppose you can ‘make allowances’ for solitude. That doesn’t mean that I look under my bed before going to sleep or that I’m afraid of seeing the door of my room open suddenly in the middle of the night. All the same, I am ill at ease: for half an hour I have been avoiding looking at this glass of beer. I look above, below, right and left: but the glass itself I don’t want to see. And I know very well that all the bachelors around me can’t help me in any way: it is too late, and I can no longer take refuge amongst them. They would come and slap me on the back and say to me: ‘well, what’s special about that glass of beer? It’s  just like all the others. It’s bevelled, and it has a handle and a little coat of arms with a spade on it, and on the coat of arms is written Spatenbrau.’ I know all that , but I know that there’s something else. Almost nothing. But I can no longer explain what I see. To anybody. There it is: I am gently slipping into the water’s depths, towards fear.” [1.]

[1.]:  Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Nausea’ (Trans. Robert Baldick), London/NYC, Penguin, 1963 (1938).

Ex_ist 2 [re_configure/trans_late]

All Photo-Manipulations: February 2025

Reconfigured Appropriated Texts [Translated]:

This sense of adventure certainly doesn't come from events. A new plan will have to be presented to move the project forward. I've proven that it's more about how moments flow into each other. A fire destroyed the surrounding area (I think that's what has happened). Suddenly, it feels as if time is passing, that each moment leads to another, this one to another, and so on; that each moment is destroying itself and there's no point in stopping it, etc. It will deteriorate, be vandalised, and then we attribute this property to the events happening to us at the moment. Leaving things as they are clearly doesn't work. What's formal extends to substance. It's unusable, consisting of thin brick pillars topped with a dilapidated wooden-clad building. For three months of the year, there are no clear signs of progress or imminent construction. In fact, this famous era is much talked about, but barely seen. I think if nothing is done immediately, the situation will get worse.

All Original Images: Old Basford, Nottingham, February 2025

If I remember correctly, this is called the irremediability of time. At this point, it seems impossible to save anything - the feeling of adventure would just be the irremediability of time. I have to face it; every day - a complete waste of time. But why don't we always have it? Is it because time isn't always irremediable? (I would prefer if nothing happened.) There are times when you feel like you can do whatever you want, move forward or backward, it doesn't matter. And then, at other times, it feels like the network has become strained, and you can't accept that when people come here by tram. That’s the first thing to do in those cases. It’s not a failure because you can't start over (no tangible progress has been made). The applicant appealed the decision, but the Inspector upheld it. They hadn't noticed much activity on the site, except for the presence of a man who appeared to be moving rubble and debris.

I'm afraid of cities. But we mustn't abandon them. Someone has to live somewhere. Previous comments have spoken of 'nationalities' in an unfinished housing development on a citywide and national scale. If you go too far, you reach the Vegetation Belt (the greenery stretches for miles toward the cities). It's waiting, but the first thing you see is the dirty desert. When the city dies, vegetation will invade it. It will climb the stones, grab them, dig them out, tear them apart with its long black claws and accelerate its growth. It will fill the holes and plant its green paws everywhere. We must live in cities while they are alive. One should never enter alone into such a mass of hair waiting at their door. It's dangerous for the residents (neither safe nor proper).

Permission has not been implemented. You should be allowed to lift and puncture the old cross-filters, as the approved project isn't considered financially viable in the city. If you know how to do it, choose times when the animals are digesting or sleeping in their burrows (while conveniently ignoring the old, long-abandoned local eyesores hidden behind piles of organic detritus). It's a shame, you rarely find anything there but minerals - the least frightening existents of all.

Ex_ist 1 [Sartreian Spring]

 

All Images: South Leicester, March 2024

“…I started laughing because I suddenly thought of the wonderful springtimes described in books, full of cracking, bursting gigantic blossomings. There were fools who talked  to you about willpower and the struggle for life Hadn’t they ever looked at an animal or a tree? That plane with its scaling bark, that half-rotten oak - they would’ve wanted me to take them for vigorous youthful forces thrusting towards the sky. And that root? I would probably have had to see it as a greedy claw, tearing the earth, snatching its food from it.

‘Impossible to see things that way. Weaknesses, frailties, yes. The trees were floating. Thrusting towards the sky? Collapsing rather: at any moment I expected to see the trunks shrivel like weary pricks, curl up and fall to the ground in a soft, black, crumpled heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help it; that was the point. So they performed all their little functions, quietly, unenthusiastically, the sap rose slowly and reluctantly in the canals, and the roots penetrated slowly into the earth. But at every moment they seemed on the verge of dropping everything and obliterating themselves. Tired and old, they went on existing, unwillingly and ungraciously, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could come to them only from the outside: melodies alone can proudly carry their own death within them like an internal necessity,; only they don’t exist. Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. I leaned back ands I closed my eyes. But pictures, promptly informed, sprang forward and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a repletion which man can never abandon.” [1.]

“Did I dream it up, that huge presence? It was there, installed on the park, tumbled into the trees, all soft, gumming everything up, all thick, a jelly. And I was inside with the whole of the park? I was frightened, but above all I was furious, I thought it was so stupid, so out of place, I hated that ignoble jelly. A there was so much of it, so much! It went up as high as the sky, it flowed away everywhere, it filled everything with gelatinous subsidence and I could see it going deeper and deeper, far beyond the limits of the park and the houses and Bouville, I was no longer at Bouville or anywhere, I was floating. I was not surprised. I knew perfectly well that it was the World, the World in all its nakedness which was suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with fury at that huge absurd being. You couldn’t even wonder where it all came from, or how it was that a world should exist rather than nothing. It didn’t make sense, the world was present everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before it. Nothing. There had been no moment at which it might not have existed. It was that which irritated me: naturally there was no reason for it to exist, that flowing larva. But it was not possible for it not to exist. That was unthinkable: In order to imagine nothingness, you had to be there already, right in the world, with your eyes wide open and alive; nothingness was just an idea in my head, an existing idea floating in that immensity: this nothingness hadn’t come before existence, it was an existence like any other and one which had appeared after a great many others. I shouted: ‘What filth! What filth!’ And I shook myself to get rid of that sticky dirt, but it held fast and there was so much of it, tons and tons of existence, indefinitely: I was suffocating at the bottom of that huge boredom. Then, all of a sudden, the park emptied as if through a big hole, the world disappeared in the same way it had come, or else I woke up - in any case I could not see it any more; there remained some yellow earth around me, out of which dead branches stuck up into the air.” [2.]

“Dusk is falling, the first lights are going on in the town. Good Lord, how natural the town looks in spite of all its geometric patterns, how crushed by the evening it seems. It’s so …obvious from here; is it possible that I should be the only one to see it? Is there nowhere another Cassandra on top of a hill, looking down at a town engulfed in the depths of Nature? But what does it matter to me? What could I possibly tell her?

“My body turns very gently towards the east, wobbles slightly and starts walking.” [3.]

[1, 2, 3]:  Excerpts From: Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Nausea’ (Trans. Robert Baldick), London/NYC, Penguin, 1963 (1938).