The Emancipated Rider
Notes to accompany the exhibition of the same name at tHEIR Gallery, London (2024)
Editor’s Notes
These notes intend to support the studio as a practice that is bound to the artist’s life, as much as to the making of objects. I’m interested in materials and processes, accidents and the subconscious alignments between matter that kicks about in the studio. Stuff is brought in from the street, each with its own history and value, they’re disparate things operating to create new readings. Making, like thinking or speaking, is almost always on the tip of your tongue; like a name you’re trying to remember, or a face you’ve almost forgotten. It is never linear- a sentence that is wrapped around the work in a single bow. It resembles the way you dream: dreams, a quantum of possibilities all at once.
The Transient State of All Matter
Two longstanding symbols in my studio, one, an image of a horse and rider on the brink of starvation; the second, a tempura fried bicycle that fits in the palm of your hand. What do these two have in common, other than that they co-habit the same space?
Do you burst out laughing, or do you sob?
Is this image painful? Is the message for a 17th Century believer too severe? Is the greasy object a little brash and hot-headed, or is it too, poignantly tragic?
They are humorous, docile aggressors.
Repeated exposure and thinking about these two choreographed a new meaning to the exhibition at tHEIR Gallery, London (2024). The title is a word play on the 17th Century Indian Deccan painting, ‘The Emaciated Horse and Rider’.
The image captures a scene of beauty and despair, the fragile bodies and protruding ribs of the horse and rider, evoking a sense of doom and inevitability. But surprisingly, the horse is sticking his tongue out at us. Crazy eyed and on the brink of disaster, it points to a tragi-comedy that finds humour in the midst of a potentially serious situation. Their delicate bodies reveal a convulsive beauty linked to the state of something being on the very edge of dissolution.
Mystical interpretations about the yearnings of the soul and the importance of the practice of asceticism have been ascribed to these striking images of mortification, which became an established genre in Indian painting in the 17th Century.
Horses often symbolise power, vitality, and life force, while the emaciated figure personifies detachment from worldly desires, or the inevitable decline of the physical body. There are several existing images of this kind, some which can be found at the Met, they intended to invite contemplation on the philosophical aspects of existence, the passage of time, the spiritual journey, the transient state of all matter.
The reference to this painting is a tribute to the ceaseless and absurd ambition of the artist’s journey, a pursuit of desire, a love of all material things. Unlike the ascetic, the artist is a hoarder, scavanging for fascinating debris, a collector of colours, prints, textures and forms, all matter is equally dear in their eyes. This handling and inspection starts with curiosity and finishes with admiration- why we love to put things on a pedestal.
The creative vision, like a divine revelation, drives action. The desire to see just one more, will it be better than the last, is there a chance of perfection? The artist’s journey, a priori, is rooted in pure hope, emerging from an innate belief in the transformative power of creativity, a belief that relentlessly draws you towards something. What’s the end goal? Divine redemption, Nirvana?
Speaking in tongue are the artist’s notes scrawled into a sketchbook.
This small and simple object, a tiny tempura fried bike, became mythical over time— it transcended its form. Within alchemy, the medieval and more spiritual predecessor of chemistry, the alchemists believed that lead was just a lower form of gold that hadn’t fully reached its potential as a spiritually perfect metal. Not exactly lead to gold, but tempura to bronze somehow makes sense to me.
Deep frying is a process that transcended class and societal barriers. It travelled the world, rubbing shoulders with the downtown one night and emperors the next. It is metaphorically a purging and purification through scalding oil, a sizzling re-birth. Great affliction often precedes enlightenment. This caloric food bears the traces of less prosperous times, originating from missionaries in Portugal who used it as a way to break the fast around the ember days, Quattuor Tempora. It travelled to the port of Nagasaki and detonated as a street food that later climbed from the fish markets as something the fishermen would only make for themselves to bring joy to a chilly early morning to being served as haute cuisine. In my parrticular method, I always whisk the batter with ice, if you want it to be especially light and cripsy.
Fried food in today’s world of extreme bodily preservation, that kind of food, is only if you dare to eat it. Expressions of taste are assertions of power; social inequality is perpetuated on the basis of cultural distinction. Invisible market forces harass us into a condescending of taste. Bad Taste for some is worse than stupidity- but, isn’t it more fun?
It’s a big hearty laugh rather than an ass-cinching giggle.
With this in mind, the futile dream of a life size tempura bike cycling down the road became my Sisyphus. It became a metaphor for the repetitive tasks we face, the doubt and the absurdity that often comes with the pursuit of our goals. It is a humorous reflection on the complexities and contradictions we face, a plight to succeed amidst many failures. Within the concept of the absurd, schadenfreude—the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others—can be seen as a paradoxical and ironic expression of human nature. Seeing someone trip is watching their ego drop, seeing that they too are subject to the same laws of gravity. It is a collective reminder of our shared vulnerability, the need to laugh to release the tension of suffering.
The 17th Century ‘The Emaciated Horse and Rider’ and the contemporary ‘The Emancipated Rider’ share this message. They are both emblems to the work that is produced in the studio, present like two icons to pray to.
“VOUS ÊTES FOU!”
Poor Jacques Derrida would torture himself at night, unable to sleep, agonising over the details of his philosophical musings.
The paintings in the studio are in a constant state of becoming. Silks are tightly stretched, the threads straining at the brink of tearing, others hang like exotic pelts, the texture of extruded oil paint like the skin of a rare reptile.
At the outset, lies a large screen of pure, white, untouched silk. Historically, the material was highly prized not only for its unique properties but also for its association with wealth and status. The Silk Road facilitated cultural exchange and economic growth shaping civilisations and empires along its route. The price of silk as a raw material fluctuates based on currency exchange, market trends, price of labour. It represents the pinnacle of opulence. Yet, it becomes medium for a deconstructive process of making and unmaking that harbours the potential for absolute beauty or complete ruin.
It starts with the cut; a radical and poetic strategy as well as a permanent gesture. There is no scenario in which the scissors can rewind back in time and mend what they have severed, just as once the paint is pushed through the screen, there is no way of reversing the flow.
The paintings are made by working in reverse, within the frame of taut silk the image is created by pushing paint from both sides of the screen in a systematic but unbridled gestural approach that searches for a moment of flow between hand and surface. There is a need for speed, to capture that fleeting moment of total focus, the optimal state of consciousness where time ceases to exist and finally the chatter of the mind is silenced. Getting in the zone doesn’t always come easy, there are methods I’ve adapted such as playing the same track on repeat for the entire duration of a painting session, burning scents of anduz or palo santo to change the feeling of the room, quite often not stopping to consume for long stretches of time- stopping for any reason would be too much of a distraction, once the game has begun take no prisoners.
I see the paintings as designed by light. The changing brightness of the day plays a pivotal role in the creation of the work, as well as resonating as a cultural symbol of the spirit. Opaque patterns of waves build up obliterating the light, the remaining twinkles behind the silk act as a guide, inviting a reaction to the artist behind the screen to push. Like a moth to a flame, ‘transverse orientation’ is the name given to the behaviour of flying insects that orient themselves toward a distant source of light.
As the screen fills with gestures of paint, the glow from behind creates fleeting images that are soon obscured to the artist behind the screen. However, when viewed from the front, the canvas shines in technicolour.
The series of compositions exist within the irreversibility of the mark, confronting the impossibility of undoing what has been done, against the unpredictable nature of the process. It engages in a dialectic that dissolves the hierarchy between painting as an illusion or imitation and painting as a free and material process.
Over the course of a year these works have slowly evolved to find a median between control and spontaneity. The first of these paintings were made with blistering speed - painted with energy and exuberance, colours were mixed on brute impulse, extracting the brightest possible pigment and not caring if it would be rioting on the other side. Fully letting go was an exercise in acceptance, not being afraid to see something that clashed or had a mass of tensions within it, allowing it to exist and moving forward. The mistakes are the healing wounds amidst a kaleidoscope of perfect accidents.