Janus

Lumen & Logic

A cubo-modernist head built twice. One ladder of horizontal levels runs edge to edge across the sheet and every edge in the picture snaps to it — the panelled ground behind the figure, the tops and bottoms of the face planes, and the bases of the panels below the jaw alike — so a dozen unrelated shapes stay locked to one system. A single vertical seam, straight above the brow and below the chin and bowed into a profile curve between them, splits the head; the sitter is then constructed independently on each side of it, at its own scale and its own elevation, from a short vocabulary of large opaque planes: slabs, teardrop lobes, thick crescents, quarter-discs and wedges, painted back to front so depth is occlusion alone. Because the two views are resolved at different scales, their features refuse to meet — one eye is larger than the other and rides higher, each with its own iris hue and lash flicks, while the lips sit astride the seam as the one mark both views share. Where a plane crosses a level it steps to the next tone in its own ladder, contours fall on a share of the boundaries at varying weight, panels of hairline stripes, disc columns, square columns and speckled bands fill the body, and outline-only arcs and circles drift across the ground. Flat matte ink throughout, under an even canvas grain.

Medium

Generative algorithm, archival pigment print

Dimensions

60 × 90 cm