Artifacts & Digressions - Deconstructed Tales

Premise

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There are Artifacts and Digressions.

Artifacts

Artifacts are perceptual documents of spaces I explore, intentionally or by accident, and the deflections of 'self' within them. They are the raw data of a place rendered as a state of mind.

Formally, Artifacts are sketches in pen, pencil and charcoal; mostly created en plein air.

Digressions

Digressions are what happens with the raw data after internal processing; a variety of feedback from the perceptual system.

Formally, Digressions are abstract assemblage paintings on canvas, cloth, cardboard or glass, made with found objects from specific places - the bearers of local mythos. The resulting works are semantically dense, open to multiple readings and deliberately resistant to a single explanation.

There is no strict progression from Artifact to Digression. They are neither 'before and after' nor 'source and outcome'. They grow alongside one another, interfere with one another, and sometimes have very little apparent connection at all. Artifacts begin with a place; Digressions - with a memory, object, old story or inexplicable impulse.

Together, they form a messy conversation with a place and with myself. The longer I remain somewhere, the more entangled the conversation becomes: the place acquires memories, memories acquire places, and things that seemed unrelated start talking to each other.

Artifacts & Digressions is what that conversation looked like in Heidelberg, from 2024 to 2026.