Pam Martin

Three Parts

Part of Companion

ISBN 9781928650423

An ongoing investigation and record of the process of conflation.
Art historical interventions as scrap book maneuver.

For more than a few years I have been writing to the artist Mike Kelley, who committed suicide in 2012. These letters usually explored art related materials and my own emotional turbulence. They are now bundled within a bigger project which I refer to as the Redoubt. Kelley spoke about “the conflation of psychic reality and mass culture reality”. I am very interested in this conflation. It remains a constant dynamic and personal metabolism even though everything seems like a bleaker territory of sizing right now. Of revelation. Of skin scraping certitude along a stucco wall. Waiting for the blood to appear. Examining my own reactionary tendencies, inner voices, and self control. How complicity gestates in the vernacular. Meanwhile, what do we do with our grief?

The visual components are a mock-up of whatever was on the table top which included sunlight continuously shifting the still life. My theoretical pull & carry which are drawings that reorganize time. For example; a living face smashed against the page of Wyeth’s Christina proposing an I to eye effort.

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