Methodology: Science & Intuition

Landau Gallery Belmont Hill School, Belmont, MA, April, 2004

This exhibition offered the opportunity to follow one idea thoroughly and exhaustively in a beautiful small gallery that was also the site of my high school years. I wanted to take up on the discourse that is constant between the methods of intuitive investigation and scientific method. I wanted to attempt to explicitly reveal the limits and difficulties of each methodology. 

The six paintings shown here are created using specific rules and restrictions: #1…Single thick line, #2…Single thick line, single sharp line, #3…Single thick line, rubbed thick line, #4…Gestural line, single thick line, #5…Gestural line, single thick line, single sharp line, #6…Gestural line, single thick line, rubbed thick line. 

The underlying grid is composed using chance procedures to locate the start of the process (the very first circle is put down at random) and recurring rules to dictate the development of the grid (same-sized circles, tendency to the horizontal, etc). The color is created using the same rules and procedures for every painting. 

What is interesting is when the rules reach the limit of their ability to dictate, the place where slippage occurs, the place where the artist must use intuition to decide the next step. It is interesting that rules always come to this, the rules can’t cover every foreseeable possibility. The possibilities keep outrunning the rules.