I'm here to stop, at Laurel Gitlen, NY

I'm sharing the PR here for my show at Laurel Gitlen in Brooklyn, opening March 28, 2026. The show is modest in scale and my first solo presentation in NYC. 

I'll also share two epigraphs, by Marcel Duchamp, and Gilles Deleuze, that we redacted from the final draft. I believe nonetheless that they address a key problem in art making, which is knowing when to stop. Art making today is a challenging thing because no one tells artists to stop, and no one tells them to keep going. This is particularly challenging in an individualistic culture where the utility of art is ambiguous, and often egoistic. I actually intuit that my writing below is symptomatic of the culture and feel a bit uneasy about it... 

I REALIZED VERY SOON THE DANGER OF REPEATING INDISCRIMINATELY THIS FORM OF EXPRESSION AND DECIDED TO LIMIT THE PRODUCTION OF "READYMADES" TO A SMALL NUMBER YEARLY. I WAS AWARE AT THAT TIME, THAT FOR THE SPECTATOR EVEN MORE THAN FOR THE ARTIST, ART IS A HABIT-FORMING DRUG AND I WANTED TO PROTECT MY "READYMADES" AGAINST SUCH CONTAMINATION.

- Marcel Duchamp, ‘Apropos of Readymades’


“ He does not seek the last drink; he seeks the penultimate one. Not the ultimate, because the ultimate [Deleuze gestures with his hands] would place him outside his arrangement. The penultimate is the last one… before beginning again the next day.

- Gilles Deleuze, ‘B: Boire/Boisson (Drink)’

 

2/3/2026

My first class of the year, called Face and Mask, began on January 12, 2026, at the University of Illinois Chicago. It’s a Topics course in Sculpture that probably needs no further explanation, given the title. I’ve seemingly prepared for this class for the last 12 years. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Some collected research materials can be found at my Are.na account, and the entirety of the course is structured around Simon Starling’s Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima): The Mirror Room (2010). Starling directs and drafts dramaturgy for the 16th-century Noh drama Eboshi Ori. Reinterpreting characters in the play by commissioning new masks to represent the archetypes, carved by Yasuo Miichi, in Osaka, Japan. Shot in the artist’s studio, it presents both artists’ research materials and development methods as a video essay, with interspersed footage of the artist carving, measuring, sculpting, drawing, treating surfaces, and painting. It’s probably my favorite work of art. The process was used as the spine of an entire course. 

 

 

The film stills present most aspects of a solid studio practice; it is acceptably cluttered, small but not claustrophobic, and contains most. There is potential movement, a window with curtains, materials, tools, ephemera, but noticeably no snacks. Metamorphosis happens here, with music playing, and hopefully some sensible breaks taken. 

 

Back after a fifteen year hiatus

 2/1/2026 

I'm restarting this blog after fifteen years, inspired by Graham Hamilton, and a recent introduction to the late Lauren Berlant's Supervalent Thought, excerpts of which were published in Art and Order Journal.

I don't know how to describe the last decade and a half in-brief but here are a few little details: 

1. I don't live in Baltimore anymore, I left for Chicago in 2014.
2. I still live in Chicago. 
3. I have been a lecturer at art schools for the last five years; with a one time stint as a private school English teacher. 
4. I've been married for six years. 
5. I have managed to survive while pursuing art. 
6. I have published writing elsewhere, and will republish what I can on this blog. 
7. We live in a time of generative AI, which use what is called large language modeling to create text. That's right, computers systems are being programmed to simulate human neurology. It produces what George Orwell called "newspeak."    

The past posts won't be edited much or at all, though I may add a photo for reference here and there. I'm not sure yet, it seems like my younger self had hoped to keep this entirely text based. My guess is that hyperlinks are fine but that I just hadn't thought about using them especially since a few entries are based on papers.  

 

people will always come to my work with questions, or find themselves perplexed, but above all i hope that they enjoy the experience of being with the work. my motive is to distract above all.

i don't want to see anything except for a herse stuck in traffic, and a noose with a trampoline

i wish i had never met any of you because the more aware i become of your motion the more i am aware of my own stagnance. i'm more frustrated with myself for placing all of the blame on you.

my dear god,

you forgot how hot the water was.