Paintings & Drawings2020produced

RANDOM MARKS I II III IV

Four squares, sprayed rather than brushed

Four square canvases arranged in a two-by-two block on a pale ground, each sprayed with red, yellow and blue on white.

A square canvas with a yellow stroke and a red splat along the top, a black elongated blob across the middle and an orange burst below. — Top left in the set.

Close view: the black blob above, red and orange fingers running out below it.

Close view: a red splat throwing fingers, a black dot beside it, yellow beneath.

Close view: orange fingers running down through a yellow field, red behind.

Four canvases, 30 by 30 centimetres each, spray paint, 2020. They belong to the group of thirteen paintings made that year in Barcelona, and they are the only one of the thirteen that is four objects rather than one.

Close view: the black mass with two blue dots on it, a red band beneath.

A square canvas with a round orange blob upper left, a red diagonal band and a curved orange stroke low on a pale blue haze. — Top right.

Close view: the black mark against blue haze, the yellow blob beside it.

Close view: the curved yellow stroke and the grey drips falling through it.

Close view: blue flecks and a yellow edge on almost bare white.

The rest of that group is restrained, a white ground, a small number of marks, a lot of air between them. These are the opposite reading of the same idea. Red, yellow, blue and black are put down fast and wet, they run and overspray and land on top of each other, and the white that was an interval everywhere else becomes something the colour is fighting for. Same vocabulary, turned up until it reads as noise.

Close view: a thin pink line and a yellow diagonal where blue meets a red edge.

Close view: the black mark, the yellow blob and the grey drips together.

A square canvas with a blue arc, a red splat and a black dot at the top, and a large red and yellow burst through the centre. — Bottom left.

Close view: red fingers reaching across blue, yellow flecks scattered over it.

They work as a block and they work alone, which is why they are shown both ways here: the four together first, then each one at full size with the close views that follow it. Nothing in the close views has been cropped for composition, they are simply the canvas at the distance the paint was made at.

Close view: red at full density running down over yellow.

Close view: a black disc sitting in a field of red and yellow.

Close view: a dark smear of overspray drifting across blue.

A square canvas with a fingered red burst at its centre, blue spray behind it and small black marks at the lower edge. — Bottom right.

Close view: the red burst throwing fingers out over blue and yellow.

They hung in a row high above the doorway at Espronceda in November 2020, in the HYELTW? show, which is the last photograph here.

Close view: red laid across yellow with blue behind.

Close view: yellow at its heaviest, red pushing in at the edges.

Close view: red fingers against blue, the white barely showing.

The four small spray-painted squares hung in a row high above a doorway, bright against the white wall — Hung above the door at Espronceda, November 2020.

A note on their names. The four are titled I, II, III and IV, but nothing in the source material says which square carries which numeral, and the file numbering does not follow it, so each is named here by the position it takes in the set rather than by a numeral it might not own.

Medium: Spray paint on canvas
Materials: spray paint, stretched canvas
Dimensions: 30 x 30 cm each
Role: Artist
Creative direction: Diana Boier
Photography: Vittor Schetti
Exhibited: HYELTW?, Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture, Barcelona, 2020