Communication In The Presence Of Noise

Thomas Duncan Gallery is pleased to announce Communication in the Presence of Noise, Sean Paul’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. In Chauvet Cave, the prehistoric mouth labored as actuator in the chain of processes beginning with a two-way coupling of the electro-chemical to mechanical domain, transforming signals sent from brain into mechanical deformation of tongue and lips. The first print heads were subject to the same coupling of acoustic and fluid dynamic domains as the last. The first device used to modulate and sample the pulsing ejection of droplets forming images: the hand and fingers, our key evolutionary distinction, marking out human noise from chaos, separating ochre spittle into a modulated pattern in signatory ratio and rhythm, wall-not-wall, sputum earth, absence, sputum earth, absence. It’s a fuzzy line that blurs the boundary between history and prehistory, that edge where marks become symbols, inventories, laws, commands, Kreon’s verbs. Mud, earth, clays and paints made from binding particles to stuff more rare establish the granulated exception. The first rudiments of writing and drawing were non-syntactical single bit tokens (one token one concept) used for counting. Six horses and carriage would be marked out: horse horse horse horse horse horse carriage. The production of fabric began about the same time as recorded history. Warp and weft, horizontal and vertical lines, rows of symbols able to augur as greatly as the sunset, the birth of the grid, plots of land, partitions controlling moments of equivocation, fence and gate, guarding sheep from tyger. Alberti used the woven veil to cleave his pyramid, expounding a mathematical theory of painting and visual space. The veil was an expedient as well as a technic that generated something outside human capability, undeniably a grid used to make three dimensional space addressable. The parallel of life now only relatable to that of the grid, the resolution of life’s matrix relating to the diameter of warp and weft threads and the holes inbetween. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were smitten with Jacquard’s loom, Babbage owned one of the few woven portraits of Joseph-Marie Jacquard, he showed it off at several of his Number One Dorset Street Saturday soirées. The portrait of Jacquard, woven by the Lyon weaving firm Didier Petit & Co. was produced using 24000 punch cards corresponded to 24000 rows of weaving. The punch card being the device allowing automatic manufacture of pattern and image. Down the road Hollerith would pick this card up too, punch holes in it, and IBM would improve upon it, for good and bad alike. Sean Paul (b. 1978) lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions: Campoli Presti, Paris, France; Laurel Gitlen, New York, NY; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; JTT, New York, NY; Front Desk Apparatus, New York, NY; COMA, Berlin, Germany. Paul’s work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. This December the artist will mount a solo presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach with Thomas Duncan Gallery.

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