((Nay Sir Cis))

2022

((Nay Sir Cis))

2022

((Nay Sir Cis)) is a project that situates four paintings as the backdrop for a daily performance centered around a fifth painting. The fifth painting rests upon four plaster sculptures at about knee height like a “table” on the floor. The concept came from three stances the painter identified as philosophically defining their current practice. The first stance: painting is prosthetic. It acts as an extension for the artist’s body, inseparable from performing and gesturing the artist’s subjectivity. Second, painting is a performance of power, as painting reflects and extends the artist into another form, another body. This double body, in Lacanian terms, is the materialized mirrored self, (if you care for this). If you do not care, then let’s say to be able to recognize or see oneself outside of one’s body is a certain kind of achievement. It provides the individual a sense of power as there is value in being seen, like in a tagged photo on social media or your name in the paper. Third, the relationship between the artwork and the artist requires an ecological lens, as both influence and affect the other, a cycle of submitting to each other throughout the process. 

These stances were a point of departure to question the opposition between reflexivity and the mythological self. Initially, Clyde improvised a plethora of paintings. Five were recognized for a visual synchronicity connecting their imagery to the story of Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The emergence of this patriarchal narrative, a sort of root in Western cultural ideology, felt obtrusive. To not be able to create subconsciously outside patriarchal signs and systems made the artist question its emergence. Accepting this challenge, or rather opportunity, the artist diverged from reifying the tired narrative, incorporating it into a process of reflection. 

The inclusion of a performance with the paintings navigated the divergent path away from Narcissus and Ovid’s dramatized complex of self-obsession. The performance was set towards a path of self awareness, asked to move past this complex where one fails to see outside the self and is unable to fully grasp the self. The performance occurred for an hour daily over the course of the exhibition. The pictures below capture day ten of fourteen. The artist signaled the performance by positioning themselves on the floor, sitting with one knee up, in front of SUB\\ure (see 4th image below). A tracing of the artist is revealed from a white outline in the painting. Emerging from the painting the artist improvised interactions to dismantle the “table.” This “table” was constructed to draw the gaze down, like Narcissus’s gaze at the pool. Simultaneously positioned as a reflection to She was In`’;`,’`flamed (see 2nd image below). If the foot continued beyond the frame on the wall, its imagined body could also gaze down upon the table. The “table” top painting is this foot's reflected self, its interior space marked with desire and conflict where two bodies mirror away from each other. 

The plaster sculptures are hollow casts emulated after a foundational sculpture of a stump that pushed the artist back into painting. Their job is to support. In the performance the artist reframes and restructures the “table.” The casts fall under the weight of the artist and the activated painting. They corrode and break down, failing to maintain their job, to support; becoming victims from their own device. The sculptures' remnants, dust and fragments, are collected, repositioned, and curated by the artist, tracing the interactions in an experimental redistribution. As the remnants accumulate, transforming from one structure into another, a sort of floor painting appears under the table.

The performance could be seen as an act against the metaphorical self or as a self-indulgent ego driven to perform spectacularly. The artist plays between the tensions of performing and attending to the unplanned problems produced everyday. The work asks how to navigate penetrating systems one is born into without losing themselves or destroying everything. This is not a replication of self-destruction or idealization of nihilism. It's the daily routine of showing up and working through failure. The artist is always aware of the audience and putting on a show, while attempting to find solutions for the destruction and the costs of performing and entertaining an audience. In tending to the deconstructed bits, the artist acknowledges the structures could serve other purposes, drawing out fresh perspectives. The performance worked in tandem with the paintings, exemplifying their stances while also gesturing towards Narcissus. The exhibition ceases to be the endpoint and the performance becomes representational of daily life, even one’s own struggles with social media in real time and space.