On Composition

 

Plane, space, frame

 

Space in the work is always built into the depth of the sheet (an illusion of space, of course). But the plane of the sheet itself never disappears — it always retains its active role, regardless of our wishes, and this has to be reckoned with. The same is true of the frame. An artist can choose not to draw the frame, letting the composition run off the edge. But the fact that it isn't drawn doesn't mean it isn't there — it has simply shifted to the edge of the work, and the artist has lost control over it. The frame serves as a boundary not only between what is drawn and what isn't, but between the spatial and the flat. That's why in my work it is always drawn on the sheet. Losing control over the boundary between the spatial and the flat — which is what the frame is — would be too great a loss.

 

Certain elements of the depicted object — most often cross-sections — I place literally in the plane of the sheet. This, of course, is nothing new: in architectural drawings, sections always lie in the plane of the sheet. I try to place these sections as close to the frame as possible: either merging them with the area beyond the picture (the margins) into a single area, or building some form of interaction between the section and the margins. The treatment of the frame becomes a key site — the place where space (represented by the picture) and flatness (represented by the margins and the section) collide and interact.

 

Because of this concern, I almost never use perspective with multiple vanishing points: it makes it impossible to bring out planes parallel to the plane of the sheet. My primary projections are various forms of frontal and axonometric projection, occasionally Italian perspective. These are the ones that let the depicted space engage with the plane of the sheet, since they contain many planes parallel to the sheet's plane. And out of that multitude, I can choose the particular plane that I set into the plane of the sheet.

 

Just as in academicism the composition gravitates toward the center, in my work it gravitates toward the frame. My center is often fairly empty and incidental — though not always. I can't deny the importance of the center of a composition (especially a square one) as the intersection of the central axes and diagonals. So if I do place an object at the center, it is the geometric center — the precise point where all the principal axes of the composition intersect — whereas in academic painting, for all its general gravitation toward the center, the geometric center itself and the central axes are avoided.

 

Diagonal, axes

 

The importance of the diagonal and the central axes is hard to overstate. The diagonal especially, since it links the key points of the format — the corners. Another interesting feature of the diagonal is its duality: it can be perceived as lying in the plane of the sheet and, at the same time, as receding into the depth of space. For instance, if an object is inscribed in the picture using axonometric projection — specifically frontal isometry, a variant I'm particularly fond of — the direction of that projection (45°) coincides with the direction of the square's diagonal. This is a geometric inevitability. I go further and make the diagonal coincide with the central axis of the object itself. So the diagonal operates on three levels at once:

 

Compositional — the diagonal connects the corners of the format, i.e. it works within the plane of the sheet.

Projective — in frontal isometry, the direction of projection coincides with the square's diagonal, i.e. the same line recedes into depth.

Object-level — the principal axis of the depicted object is aligned with that same diagonal.

 

I don't assemble a composition out of objects but instead fit an object into a composition. Confirmation of this is that I have series of works with identical — one could say the same — compositions, but entirely different objects: for example, a rostral column in one, the Statue of Liberty in another (Figs. 1, 2). These works are executed in an entirely identical composition but with completely dissimilar objects, and everything said above about the diagonal applies to them equally. So does everything said at the outset about the interaction between the plane of the sheet and the space of the picture, and the pull of the composition's key elements toward the frame. The same goes for what I said about the center of the composition: either there's nothing there, as with the rostral column, or the object sits at the strict geometric center and nowhere near it — as with the head of the Statue of Liberty. This matters to me to such a degree that I drew the rays of her crown in an exact circle around the center, even though doing so meant distorting them slightly from the original. These facts point to the formal relationships being primary in my work, and the depicted object being secondary — important, but secondary.