Abfall · aesthetic waste

A stretcher is normally hidden behind its painting. Here the four softwood battens stay bare, knots and all, and show through the film from the front, because the support is part of the picture. Over the machine grid of the columns we laid a second grid by hand. Thick cobalt paste is pressed on with a knife, crushing the air columns beneath it and cresting where it runs onto the timber. Three runs divide the square: one the full width, one the full height, and a third that drops from the top edge and stops at the horizontal. With its frame and its three bars, the panel reads as a window made of waste.

The paste is never smoothed. Torn edges, knife partings and pulled horns stay as they were made, so that against the regularity of the film the blue is the only thing on the panel that was clearly done by a person. The film is translucent, and that is the reason for it: the canvas holds light instead of stopping it. Whatever stands behind the panel becomes part of the picture, and in sun the columns throw a striped shadow onto the wall, so the piece draws a second image of itself.

Nothing on the panel is precious. What makes it a work is attention: where the paint goes, what stays bare, and the decision to show the frame. It hangs where a window would, on a plain wall, and it is at its best with light behind it, where the columns glow and the bars go dark. Seen in a gallery it is quiet. Seen against a window it is a drawing in blue on a sheet of light.