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Luc Fuller |
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The question of originality becomes increasingly relevant in light of Wu-tang's recent decision to release only one physical vinyl record to accompany their latest album release The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. In an attempt to question the possibility of a unique object in an age of endless reproduction, re-mixing, and re-appropriation, the coveted vinyl will be sold for millions as a privately collectable cultural artifact. The paintings in Standing Paintings also look to ubiquity, distribution, and Wu-Tang for that matter, but specifically the symbol. Made in reference not necessarily the clan itself or their music, but in dialogue with the image of the 'W' and the way it has flooded the collective memory. The Wu-Tang symbol functions as one of the most recognizable, coded icons of the last few decades, it originally developed for the group in 1990 by New York based DJ Mathematics. The 'W' and its appropriation spans demographics and places and can be found carved into trees, drawn on notebooks, tattooed on bodies, or commodified onto t-shirts and hats. It in this circulation exchange, the removal of the symbol from it's origin and it's proliferation in multiple variable forms, that the paintings themselves run parallel. The works, standing in the center of the room, are removed from the walls. Quite literally rejecting the wall's support, and the associated historical lineage of painting as a window on wall, the standing paintings occupy the floor and become architectural in and of themselves. As a labyrinth of symbols demarcating potential paths through the space, interrupting views of one another, and revealing themselves in the round, the standing objects, perhaps like members of Wu-Tang, are simultaneously singular, and nevertheless always positioned within a network of reference. |