David Merritt
November 10, 2007 — December 08, 2007
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David Merritt Untitled (ain't/gonna), 2005 detail
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David Merritt presents new drawings and suspended sculptures that echo the linear density and delicacy of his works on paper.
“A good part of my practice is drawing-based because I see drawing as an open-ended endeavour that both visually and physically manifests properties of duration: through the blind excursions of line, the cumulative deposits of mark-making, and the precarious suspension of both in a space of potential erasure.”
Over the past three years David Merritt has produced a series of drawings that involve a re-charting of popular song titles. Conceptually based in his ongoing interest in the ambiguous relationships between image and sound, literacy and the oral, Merritt works from database inventories of recorded music. In these works he maps thoughts around common cultural themes (such as the recurring phrases "me and my" or "on my mind”). Other recent drawings are built from the collapsed orders of the music industry's “best of” lists, such as "the top 11 heartbreak songs of all time" or “top ten songs about one night stands”. Though the original song titles can be traced in the resulting drawings, constitutive phrases are typically broken up and redistributed in such a way as to create new, non-linear clusters of meaning. Merritt's drawings comprise an open, and occasionally explicit relationship with the more physical 'airplay' associated with his sculptures made from unraveled sisal rope strands and formed into ephemeral emanations of sound and movement.
Artists:
David Merritt