Acknowledge the Shadows

The shadow defies the logic of the market; it has only fleeting experiential value that defies commodification. In each print of Acknowledge the Shadows, layers are created with stencils of shadows I witnessed in the Bay Area, new to the city and wondering what compromises I had made to get there. The diagonal lines originally designed for the structural integrity became an integral part of the piece. Each of the layers of my monotypes are ghost prints, the differences in value created by pressure and ink left behind – echoes of both the original shadow and the previous print pulled. 

 

Some layers also draw inspiration from the microscopic, for instance the edge of a gaba molecule, reflecting the fractal nature of the universe. When going up and down in scale we see similar patterns, this edge could  be the wave of an ocean or arms of the milky way.

 

It has become a nightly ritual to document the shadows; noticing them is a portal out of what Byung-chul Han calls the digital panopticon, the achievement based control of big data and social networks.1  In physics light is both a particle and a wave, just as the shadow is both presence and absence, revealing postmodern contradictions.  To acknowledge the shadows is to shift our attention, to see there is no I in the vacuum of space, and to hear Jose Ortega when he says “I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself."2

 

1 Han, Byung-Chul. Psychopolitics. Verso Books, 1 Nov. 2017.

2 Ortega, Jose. Meditations of Quixote. W.W. Norton, 1963.