Glass Head, Green Wall
John Burt Sanders
Location:
BlankSpace
843 Holland Ave. Wilkinsburg, PA 15221
Dates:
October 30th - November 22th, 2020
Viewing by appointment only, please contact the artist via email (johnburtsanders@gmail.com) or phone (585.322.3643). Individuals and small groups only. Please wear a mask.
Statement:
Glass Head, Green Wall is a body of work inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We. Originally published in 1921, We presents a self-contained utopic settlement, what Zamyatin calls the “OneState,” populated by a citizenry dubbed “ Numbers” who are collectively working to launch an interstellar spacecraft intended to spread propaganda in order “to integrate the indefinite equation of the universe.” One of the central notions of the book as evidenced by the narrator is a preference for perfection, clarity and totality whether that is the pursuit of a “mathematically infallible happiness,” an “unsullied” blue sky or the discovery of a “general formula.”
The paintings and drawings I’ve created in response to We explore the underlying absurdity of rationality as the ultimate/only method of understanding reality, the exclusive nature of conformity and insidious presence of surveillance. Works such as Pleasant and Useful Function or Everything Tends Toward Perfection utilize passages from the book to explore the homogenizing philosophy of OneState but also make use of compositions that resist forming a unified image. Other works take on the scale and position of security guards as well as the minimalist designs of home security devices. These paintings are modeled after “OneState Guardians,” enforcers of the panopticon-like environment of OneState.
Nearly a hundred years have passed since the initial publication of We and the world remains defined by those same concerns that prompted Zamyatin to write. Our willingness to exchange our privacy for safety, a programmatically disengaged citizenry and increasing preference for nationlist governing bodies all contribute to a diminished plurality and a gradual extinction of difference. Glass Head, Green Wall was made with these concerns in mind in hopes it might hint at a narrow bridge between logic and illogic, to somehow straddle the gap between known and unknown, one foot sunk in the requirement of reason and the other searching for a foothold in uncertainty.
-John Burt Sanders
BlankSpace is a work in progress: a home under construction; a small seed holding the potential of growing into a collaboratively organized living and working space that is being cultivated by Joey Behrens.
