Kadar Brock makes abstract paintings and works on paper that explore history, personal psychology, but mostly materials and surface. He takes his old, bright, “failed” paintings and hides them beneath layers and layers of paint, only to abuse them and sand them with a belt sander until the old shape of the former painting dictates a new and beautiful surface.
Statement:My work is generated by interrelated processes that manifest in three concurrent series of paintings and a series of sculptures. All of these bodies of work begin with paintings on canvas that I produce instinctively, in a ‘free space’ made possible by the paintings’ inevitable erasure (see magicalitems.tumblr.com).
They embody, and are created with, a Romantic belief in gesture and authorship. From these ‘seed paintings’ I create my sanded paintings (deredem…) through a labor-intensive process of first scraping, and then sanding down all the painted marks. Next, numerous layers of industrial strength primer and spray paint are added then repeatedly sanded, producing a subtle, worn color-field. This scraping and sanding, even as it erases the original marks, creates new ones (holes, tears, gouges), and maps the painting’s history of production with the resulting topography. The material produced through this scraping and sanding generates the paint chips that produce another body of paintings (rdns…), and the dust that comprises yet another (residuum…).
In my sculpture series mystic reagents…, human scaled slabs of cast hydrocal and aqua resin serve as mutated paintings —made of the same materials as the other works, but re-contextualized and conglomerated. This ecosystem of works physically pressures painting as both object and record, and deconstructs Romanticism’s belief that an artist’s intentions automatically translate through their actions. These processes undo gesture with ritual and, hopefully, result in works that offer repose and respite in this increasingly hyper-saturated era.
My process has been shifting slightly, is more evident in the studio pics. That change is – instead of layering spray paint after sanding/priming each layer, I’ve gone ahead and just started making complete oil paintings between layers. So, I make a painting. Undo it with a razor blade. Prime it. Sand it. Make another painting on top of it. Repeat until… It leads to a slower process, but also reaffirms the work’s general goal of pushing on concepts and relationships to gesture, while allowing for more of what the process is to be evident in the final work. The newer sanded piece in this group really evinces that, with some of the gestures still being visible, ghosts of a mark almost.
29 September 2016
