Ink Paintings by Connor Gravelle

when i first wet the wax paper on which these were produced, i commenced a process which was both unpredictable and contingent on the very moment of its initiation. was the room humid? did my breath across the page make uneven the thin layer of water? as i laid ink in evenly distributed lines, my hand grew more tired with each staccato motion. the twist of the wrist at the end of each line – down across the page to begin the next – slowly tired me. did my hand become plaint to the force of its exertion to stand steadily above the page?

though abstract, these pieces are overwhelmingly personal. lines of ink drawn across a paper. when i made these pieces, i was primarily concerned with an issue of control. while they are art, their character is architectural in as much as they pursue the boundaries of control and material instability. so often in architecture, we regard our lines as exact – fixed expressions of linearity unflinchingly scarred across screen and page.

in the most literal, non-intellectualized sense, this painting is a fantasy of discipline. our expressions are material, and by that definition they are constrained to inexactitude and, ultimately, fated to impermanence. even the most freshly constructed things attain a certain wavering quality. metal studs are bent like butter and folded onto one another by construction workers unburdened with architectural concept or contextual meaning; edges are sanded away with by hand with more haphazard gusto than predicated by the scientific machismo of the computer.