From Monet’s Rouen cathedral series, to Agnes Martin’s grids, and Josef Albers’ squares, artists use repetition within frameworks (subtle variations of time, colour) to seek an understanding — a truth. Today our trust in an objective reality is stirred by technologies that can successfully replicate reality in three-dimensions.

surface obliterations I (fractional/2.5D) takes the idea of “continued transformation through repetition” to three dimensions. The gesture of crumpling is often one of frustration, meant to be hidden or disposed, yet it is part of a “documentary truth”. Paper — an archaic (?), two dimensional material — is painted expressively, for several days. Each day the paper is crumpled, embodying an affective gesture of that moment, then 3D scanned.

The results are imperfect, folded surfaces of “wrecked” data that normally need interpretation and fictionalization. Here, the data is reduced to an image - a fractional, transitional space that is subjective and can be entered and exited only one way.

“The folds, according to Gilles Deleuze, describe osmotic membranes that mediate between inside and outside…enclaves and exclaves of subjectivity and objecthood.”

Steyerl, Hito. “Chapter 15": Ripping Reality.” Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, Verso, London, 2019, 199-201.