Constructed from modified Tic Tac Toe game pieces, this sculptural painting integrates found objects into the painted surface, creating a space where image, object, and material exist as one. The familiar X's and O's are removed from their original function and reconfigured as displaced sculptural forms that operate simultaneously as recognizable symbols, objects, abstract shapes, and compositional elements.
A woven grid of twisted cloth divides the painted surface into nine window-like compartments, while two strands extend beyond the picture plane. Layers of heavy paint impasto, brushwork, doodles, and graphic marks accumulate differently in each compartment. Paint seepage appears on the exposed raw canvas on the reverse, offering evidence of a hidden geometric composition that extends beyond the visible surface and into the unseen space behind the canvas. Vivid swatches of color emerge along the edges of the exposed canvas structure, revealing traces of the geometric grid positioned against the wall. The XOXO objects, some partially covered with canvas and impasto, sit along the edge and surface of the canvas, gradually merging into the painting through line, color, and material.
The work allows expressive and geometric modes of painting, along with systems of order, representation, and abstraction, to coexist. It invites viewers to examine its surfaces as they might an archaeological site, where fragments, clues, and material traces suggest a larger whole without ever fully revealing it. Through close looking, shifting relationships between meaning, image, and object emerge.
Mixed media on joined canvases and found objects
24 x 36 x 2.5 inches
