Darin Latimer: Insect Rituals
I decided to make a bunch of Art that I did not touch.
Or, apropos of quarantine (a physiologically doubled isolation in my case), over a year into reflexive sanitizing and wishful wiping down, bearing an accumulated heavy inventory of indrawn breaths, echoing aches of full body cringe and even civil eye contact retracted with the finger snap speed of a billiard ball’s kiss, I decided to make a series of works documenting our (my) Exodus out of a vacuum of comfy, multi-generational, incurious American inconsequence (again) and, like I said, this time; No Touching.
Fate assigned me Homework in the early days of this crisis. Caught on my heels during a brief material drought at the outset I turned to painting my abundant practical delivery boxes and building them into figures which, as they grew in numbers, also resembled a cityscape. This started as a lark but turned into a ‘thing’ only recently concluded (with a brief overlap with the current series). I dubbed the box people ‘Gods of the Plague’ and kept at them for over a year.
The title comes, instead, from a Tom Waits quote describing (favorably) a Replacements concert, maybe one I was at (Imagine Tom Waits voice) – “It was very peculiar and very thrilling.”
It was. Neither his description nor my participation can fulfill the promise of that title. The Replacements were brilliantly stupid, spinally intuitive and, finally, gloriously, failures of the flesh.
I spun, leapt, screamed, stomp-danced at the lip of theirs, and many other stages, but mostly I observed, tapped my toe and nursed my drink. If Covid was a concert and I looked over my shoulder…maybe this is what I glimpsed.
I think I mostly make pictures of faces (heads)…even if there is a body, or bodies, it all turns into a big Face, skinned into vulnerability (brilliantly stupid, spinally intuitive…), a performative Frenzy on one composed plate.
I think I’ve done them justice. I think all those eyes are looking at something even if I don’t want to see it anymore.
Or, to cheat a Hemingway quote with a Major Motion Picture addendum – from ‘Seven’ (hear Morgan Freeman’s voice in your head) “The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ – ‘I agree with the second part.”
Or, apropos of quarantine (a physiologically doubled isolation in my case), over a year into reflexive sanitizing and wishful wiping down, bearing an accumulated heavy inventory of indrawn breaths, echoing aches of full body cringe and even civil eye contact retracted with the finger snap speed of a billiard ball’s kiss, I decided to make a series of works documenting our (my) Exodus out of a vacuum of comfy, multi-generational, incurious American inconsequence (again) and, like I said, this time; No Touching.
Fate assigned me Homework in the early days of this crisis. Caught on my heels during a brief material drought at the outset I turned to painting my abundant practical delivery boxes and building them into figures which, as they grew in numbers, also resembled a cityscape. This started as a lark but turned into a ‘thing’ only recently concluded (with a brief overlap with the current series). I dubbed the box people ‘Gods of the Plague’ and kept at them for over a year.
The title comes, instead, from a Tom Waits quote describing (favorably) a Replacements concert, maybe one I was at (Imagine Tom Waits voice) – “It was very peculiar and very thrilling.”
It was. Neither his description nor my participation can fulfill the promise of that title. The Replacements were brilliantly stupid, spinally intuitive and, finally, gloriously, failures of the flesh.
I spun, leapt, screamed, stomp-danced at the lip of theirs, and many other stages, but mostly I observed, tapped my toe and nursed my drink. If Covid was a concert and I looked over my shoulder…maybe this is what I glimpsed.
I think I mostly make pictures of faces (heads)…even if there is a body, or bodies, it all turns into a big Face, skinned into vulnerability (brilliantly stupid, spinally intuitive…), a performative Frenzy on one composed plate.
I think I’ve done them justice. I think all those eyes are looking at something even if I don’t want to see it anymore.
Or, to cheat a Hemingway quote with a Major Motion Picture addendum – from ‘Seven’ (hear Morgan Freeman’s voice in your head) “The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ – ‘I agree with the second part.”
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"Insect Ritual (Untouchable)"
krink ink blot drawings on heavy stonehenge paper
krink ink blot drawings on heavy stonehenge paper
