In my recent work, I seek to articulate erotic desire for an object that remains at a distance, inaccessible under layers of absence. This desire is contained within the space between covered and cover, and displaced onto the cover itself in lieu of the object hidden beneath. The careful gestures that perform this coverage bring about both the absence of this object and yet, through these very gestures, an erotic relationship is articulated. I explore the complexities of this relationship by embellishing objects with dark cloth and spills that obscure the object's unknown past.
The form of these objects implies furniture, and the intimacies it can hold. Their reclining horizontality recalls sofas, chaises lounges, ottomans. A potential to accommodate more than one body is suggested by their scale; yet, fully covered with cloth, these pieces can no longer offer bodies easy repose.
It is possible that there was a sudden event in their past, or perhaps there was a slow and imperceptible beginning to its occurrence. It may have been neglect, a reserved or voluptuous intimacy between bodies, or a mingling of caring and violent gestures. Though I am author, actor in this artifice I too am asking these questions.
They are clustered now in this bare room.
The somber sensuality of this group of pieces has no apparent connection to its surroundings. It seems that these are stored here, placed away in private, a reflection of the domestic space they were once a part of: A place where ease and elegance mingled in muscular embellishment, where sumptuous folds of drapery covered wall, window, furniture, body equally with excessive amounts of cloth. This previous habitation has provided a coverage so complete as to obscure form, to remove comfortable separations between bodies, leaving a loss of orientation where it may be my skin, your bed, our surround.
Shall I speculate?