[spectre] SSS

[{ brad brace }]

Selected Systematic Similarities
as Stories with Single Subjects

Always look for the bigger lie. Money can`t buy class; a common phrase today... 
Disparity is first created by staticism, (policies of a totally managed society.) 
Gender, economic-status, race, institutionalized-education-status (certificates of 
privilege), nationality, geographic-location, whatever, ... are assessed as relatively 
superficial factors frequently used to politicize stagnant institutions. (Yes, even 
art-colleges: those sallow humanist reparation efforts.) Unfortunately, the truly 
repressed that are especially granted these opportunities, only serve as fashionably 
symbolic justification for a pre-existing order. This cosmetic policy applies only to 
new applicants... which of course, further exacerbates the misplaced tension between 
those outside. Sadly, and for equivalent reasons, you won`t see the great artists 
exhibiting or teaching very often in traditional settings; the smugly mediocre get the 
money today.

These pictures that I meant to talk about... were first made in the `80s and have to be 
the most unpopular work I`ve ever done. They were briefly included in some of my 
interdependent installations. I suspect that they were glibly assumed to be but 
spin-offs from the then critically correct and widely-published notions of 
fragmentation. These ideas did not persist in our monolithic artworld; unless you`re 
especially tractable, you can usually only watch and not participate in official culture 
anyway. These pictures still make perfect sense to me, even now.Small pictorial 
spectres... little fragments borrowed from the truth... building around first 
impressions... They were made from alkyd/enamel painted and cut magazine pages. I was 
never quite sure how to present them; during the installations, I tried using 
clear-plastic lamination on clear plexiglass panels. Other presentations included 
room-sized picture-columns. The pictures you see here were made by arranging these 
shapes on a flat-bed scanner with a little digital retouching of the foreground. I like 
the fragility of the reduced, jagged, 4-bit, cut-paper-edges against the pixel-texture 
backgrounds. There are over one-hundred images involved.To isolate and excessively 
schematize the moment of intellectual abstraction...

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/:b