Mitchell WHWD

These descriptions are of three works that are pieces of a whole; they’re intended to be seen together, in one room.

For some reason I have chosen to write in the third person female.

1. Green Car

The first object she noticed in the room was what appeared to be a small green car. The scale was a great deal smaller than actual size but not small enough to be a model car. It was about a meter long and half a meter tall. The structure was made of cardboard with the outside covered in a green fabric that was faded by the sun in some areas resulting in two distinct shades of green. The interior and seats were upholstered in brown wool with diagonal black stripes. It did not have any of the things that make a car a car, other than its form. It had no lights or engine or radio etc. It could not be driven from point A to point B.

She wasn’t exactly sure of the reason the car existed but she knew it had meaning, or maybe it existed in a gap between meanings. It was both something she recognized but she concluded it was only the shape that was familiar as car. The materials and function did not represent a car, as she knew it.

2. Green Wool Square with sandaled Foot

On the far wall about 10 feet from the green car, she saw a large green square painting. A closer look showed her it was a textured green piece of wool stretched over the top and bottom of a frame leaving the left and right edges or the from exposed. Covering those edges was brown packing tape. On either edge were small images cut out of the tape. The image on the left appeared abstract or she thought it might be the shape of a liver or kidney. In the image on the right edge she could barely recognize the possible shape of a figure. The object coming off the edge of the bottom right corner was a cushion in the shape and scale of a human foot. The foot cushion was wearing a leather sandal that she immediately associated with biblical times and journeys across the desert that she would have seen in films.

This work gave her the sense of someone or something being lost. She also sees the images being on the border between figure and abstraction, maybe it’s the figure that’s lost in abstraction. One image or shape can be interpreted in many ways or holds many identities depending on the viewer. The work can easily shift between figure, thing, and abstraction.

3. Drawing

The third work in the room was a drawing on the left wall facing the green square. The drawing was made of blue and ochre felt tip pen on mauve colored paper 8 x 10 inches. The image was a sort of blob like shape or two blobby shapes intersected by a vein like shape joining the two blobs. This also reminded her of an internal organ of sorts but she wasn’t sure. Inside the left blob was another from that resembled an exaggerated R shape but also somehow felt figurative, like a figure performing some kind of complicated yoga move. Now the blobs became more like a liver contorting during the movement of a body.

In relationship to the other works in the room she began to see more clearly the pattern of the abstracted figure or a figure lost within itself. She thought about representations of a figure and what parts we might not recognize as ourselves. A hand for instance she would recognize immediately as a figure but she is less familiar with the shape of a liver even though it is much more vital to her existence than her hand. She thought about her shape and all the smaller shapes that make up her figure and at what point or what distance they become her or recognizable to her. Especially when thinking about her insides, her body is completely abstract to her.