'There are things known, and things unknown, and in between are the doors.'
- Aldous Huxley
As the end of the project approached, I wanted to do something in the street itself, but we'd spent a disproportionate amount of time adding spontaneous designs in response to the shape of BPN's building.
Having gotten permission from the owner of the building across the street, while Rob finished the designs on BPN's outer wall, I set about sweeping the pavement opposite and then trying to fix black tape to the brick walls. This was a dead-end: The walls were so crumbly and dusty that the tape just fell off as soon as the breeze picked it up.
Instead, I wiped down the green wooden doors, and found that the tape just about stayed put.
Again, I went off-brief, and decided to comment on the state of the building by depicting a series of 'collapsed doorways'.
Rob joined me to complete the final doorway. After two weeks, he was familiar with my core idea - that is, when something looks too uniform, throw in an anomaly, or a 'mistake'. He suggested a single white stripe on each design, which I thought was a great idea.
None of my art conforms strictly to the notion of 'geometric art', because uniformity or symmetry is something I can appreciate, but personally is not satisfying to me.
Ideally, I'd love the viewer to spend long enough in front of my art to follow where it's going, and then be surprised by something that should not be there. And they would know that the decision was made to put it in deliberately, and I'd want them to ask 'why?'
But I'm also a realist. People will most likely look at the art and not realise that they're supposed to spend a great deal of time on it, and just think 'cool design' and leave it at that. Which is also fine.
The same week also saw the occurrence of a devastating earthquake in Northern Italy, and when seen altogether, these broken portals, along with the general dilapidation of the building, appear to be an echo of that.
