"Divergent Data"

Hello receivers,

I’ve always felt that art’s job is to improve someone else’s experience—even if only for a moment. At least that’s how I see it: an invitation to think, to diverge, to find an aesthetic dimension and to reveal knowledge.

I came back from the summer break wanting to try in the studio a new way of painting: faster, looser, more spontaneous. Every one of my series began at a particular point in my life, tied to a specific state of mind. You can trace them all on my site: each one is a snapshot of how I was feeling then. And I guess I am still all of those states at once.

Over the last few years the production of my work became intricate, precise, heavy with logistics. Large pieces demanded complex processes and the steady help of a team. I’m grateful for that discipline, but I also started to feel dependent on it. Lately I’ve been chasing a different rhythm—flowing more, delivering faster, working without premeditation.

Along the way, I’ve been letting conversations seep into the work. Studio talks with friends, live streaming, unexpected questions from viewers that leave traces. The pieces get informed by these exchanges, almost like the audience is writing with me. The dialogue sparks thought on both sides: mine while I work, theirs when they stand in front of the finished piece. I call them DIVERGENT DATA.

I pulled out a Handjet printer I bought a few years ago, originally just a tool for marking shipping crates, and started writing on paintings. No sketch or plan. INFINITE OPENING.

Text has always been there. In 2012, at Colab Gallery in Weil am Rhein, Germany, I painted a diagram that still echoes in my head. I have no clue where that came from tbh.

Jacques Derrida said, “there is nothing outside the text.” For years I answered with paint: THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE THE PAINTING. The painting explains itself. When people ask what a work “means,” I point to the hard clash of black and white here, the slow drift of a color block there. That is the meaning. The surface carries its own argument. Learn to read it.

Now the two streams meet. Words with precise dictionary definitions collide with symbols and gradients that stay wide open. Text offers one possible reading; color and form keep slipping away from it. Their friction creates thought—first in me as I work without a map, then in anyone standing before the piece.

Catch you next week, all the best.

-FP