Aberrations, 2009

Black Gouache on 12 sheets of paper, 50 x 70 cm

Image information is taken from the central white area of the images from series White Rose (unfinished since 2001). This information is broken down into 6 different shades of white.

For each shade a different sized potato is used to represent that shade. The largest potato represents the whitest area, whereas for the darkest greys the smallest potato is used resulting in the negative of the original white image information.

This body of work is a direct development from Negative Light, 2004 that used similar principles of representing brightness of areas of light with the important difference that the white areas selected for potato prints is round in shape. The round potato imprints pick up this roundness of the macro-structure.

Although the grid that organises the form is clearly visible, it decomposes towards its centre due to an emerging 'chaotic' pattern of white spaces that are in some sense negative correlates to the clearly visible round potato imprints at the border of the form. For the central pattern to appear 'chaotic' (and even 'dancing' in front of the eyes) a few reasons can be named: (1) The white areas are irregular; (2) they do not consistently appear - sometimes they are 'blacked out' by the potato imprint; (3) occasionally the potato imprint leaves a white mark where the paint has not printed, which confuses the outline of the grid. In Negative Light, the white lines between the pieces of paper although apparently randomly distributed enforced the rectangular grid at the centre of the figure; here, the grid starts to disintegrate.

With Potato Prints I am looking at round structures that although based on grids upset the rigidity of the square economy.