Ben P Norton

29" x 25" x 27"

Graphite Powder, Latex on Cast Canvas

2014

The Place in Which

Performance (Ars Memoriae, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH - December 2014)

Statement from the show catalogue:

“Before you is a canvas, a shroud that has taken the form of my grandfather’s drafting board. This board is a locus of identity for both of us – the place of his work as an architectural draftsman and cartoonist, the place of my inception as an artist. During the opening reception, I will be enacting the canvas, drawing / tracing / inscribing, mapping the lines that unify our two paths.

The actions are performed through an electric eraser, a drafting tool intended for obliteration now used in generative strokes. Just as the drawings are incised, however, their ground shifts; as more graphite is removed, the drawing is both made manifest and expunged at once.

The act of memory, the place of memory, is one whose presence is nebulous, constantly in flux. To remember is to destroy and create, to cover and reveal, to generate through palimpsest, to draw from what was once there in order to make anew.”

The Place in Which

Performance (Ars Memoriae, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH - December 2014)

Statement from the show catalogue:

“Before you is a canvas, a shroud that has taken the form of my grandfather’s drafting board. This board is a locus of identity for both of us – the place of his work as an architectural draftsman and cartoonist, the place of my inception as an artist. During the opening reception, I will be enacting the canvas, drawing / tracing / inscribing, mapping the lines that unify our two paths.

The actions are performed through an electric eraser, a drafting tool intended for obliteration now used in generative strokes. Just as the drawings are incised, however, their ground shifts; as more graphite is removed, the drawing is both made manifest and expunged at once.

The act of memory, the place of memory, is one whose presence is nebulous, constantly in flux. To remember is to destroy and create, to cover and reveal, to generate through palimpsest, to draw from what was once there in order to make anew.”

The Place in Which

Performance (Ars Memoriae, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH - December 2014)

Statement from the show catalogue:

“Before you is a canvas, a shroud that has taken the form of my grandfather’s drafting board. This board is a locus of identity for both of us – the place of his work as an architectural draftsman and cartoonist, the place of my inception as an artist. During the opening reception, I will be enacting the canvas, drawing / tracing / inscribing, mapping the lines that unify our two paths.

The actions are performed through an electric eraser, a drafting tool intended for obliteration now used in generative strokes. Just as the drawings are incised, however, their ground shifts; as more graphite is removed, the drawing is both made manifest and expunged at once.

The act of memory, the place of memory, is one whose presence is nebulous, constantly in flux. To remember is to destroy and create, to cover and reveal, to generate through palimpsest, to draw from what was once there in order to make anew.”

In Situ is a recurring body of drawn installation. In each installment, I use an electric eraser as a primary medium of enacting the space.

An act of erasing into the space, erasing away the space, has created a new entity. This new thing, however, still hinges on the threshold of fragility, as it could easily be wiped away and negate the negation.

Erasing a pattern into a wall is: creating a thing and an odor out of nothing; hinting at what once could have been there but is now no longer; a possible history or future or just otherness of the space; following decorative pattern in hopes of finding something of value; creating a moment/memory/transitory thing, one that can only be felt briefly, one that creates a smell and sound in its own creation.

Dimensions Variable

Glove, Chalkboard Paint, and Chalk

2014

33" x 27" x 37"

Latex, Polyurethane on Cast Canvas with Slide Projector and Painted Stool

2014

33" x 27" x 37"

Latex, Polyurethane on Cast Canvas with Slide Projector and Painted Stool

2014