How to manifest new materials for your practice though friendship. or on making new speech acts or amplifying the unsaid.

Last week I visited a very talented artist , El Loko. He has mentored me before I even started on my MFA. He says less and listens and asks more and this has been very helpful. Entering his different studios in Köln has always been amazing and nothing short of inspirational. For about a year now he has been offering to give me some materials for my work.

This is something he does for a lot of friends it is a very generous act. We all have some things in our studios that we could let go of, these materials might be a turning point for another artist but are lying idle in your studio. Why not take the courage to ask an artist friend if there is something they don't need. Why not offer something in your studio to someone else?

I have not yet started painting using these pigments my last work is this:

I am really looking forward to creating some work with the pigments that El Loko has given me I do not think that I will be able to use them without thinking about his practice so I am interested to see what will emerge. Actually it will be a big jump for me in my practice to mix my own pigments. The "Absence Series" was actually predicated on using pre ordained given colours. It also used the language of public signs another given structure to speak about absences in the black community. I chose to use these given symbols and given colours because there is the assumption that they are universal symbols and colors ones that are beyond language and culture. Absence in the black community is culturally and socially situated and requires it's own symbols and colors but exists in a world in which it is mostly articulated in the language and symbols of other more politically dominant cultures. El Loko's  massive vision situates himself in a universial language beyond race. Politically this is huge and I feel totally dwarfed by his works. My favorite was this piece which I would buy if I could, probably because it is a reworking of an existing symbol for Channel, this is rare as he is actually always creating new and original symbols each one unique and not repeated in any other works. Part  of that work can be seen on the left of this image.

Right now I prefer sculpture using found objects. I do not feel that I can be given raw clay or raw pigment to make something that is at the behest of me, such an act is not true to the way I experience the world. I feel very comfortable with remaking what is articulating what is already there but goes unsaid. The joy in El Loko's work makes me want to do otherwise. I look forward to seeing him again when he can fit me into his busy schedule.