𓃗 materials↓
canvas, acrylic medium, graphite, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, waxed thread, oil paint, aluminum sheet metal, zinc screws, stainless steel grommets, wood

𓃗 dimensions↓
variable

𓃗 words↓

Still attempting independence. Still molding paste. Still stuttering. You need words in order to send words away.

Now I should rethink painting as well.

Receipts. Coupang Eats. McDonald’s stickers. Receipts spilling endlessly from the head of the receipt machine, hanging down. What kind of consumption do I engage in? Most receipts lose almost all their ink when they come into direct contact with molding paste or gel medium. Why? Because of pH? If I use a neutral pH adhesive, the ink doesn’t disappear at all. So I started building the first layer by mixing adhesive and molding paste in a 2:1 ratio. Deciding how much of the words to erase and how much to leave behind.

Cooking. I remember Ryan once saw one of my paintings and told me to use it as a palette now. Just going at it recklessly. When natural traces are needed more than intentional actions. After pouring the soy sauce for Cheongyang perilla oil pasta, bought from Preppers, onto a painting I had been working on by attaching various things, I decided to use that painting as a palette. I cut Cheongyang chili peppers with scissors and sprinkled them over pork neck marinated in soy sauce that Yerim and I made. Five chili seeds that popped out. Twelve sesame seeds that fell from a Downtowner hamburger bun. Onions bought by someone living alone inevitably sprout. Chop up the onion shoots and add them in. Attach these things and cover them with molding paste. I feel that this act is not very different from what I do with receipts.

A recent conversation with Changin. Let’s say there are concepts and desires. We try to create concepts to explain desire, but we still feel that there are desires that are not caught in the net of concepts (or that slip through its mesh). In the end, we give up on concepts. So we have used language to attach words, only to abstract them again in the end. Giving up on translation, even shitty translation feels similar. Being pessimistic about concepts, affirming the dismantling of concepts. Doing language. I cannot give up material. First, I diligently attach words, and after wiping them all away, what remains is material. I sense material through the body. Is material desire? For now, I cannot agree with the word “desire” as Changin used it. Still, what I had been thinking of as [words and material], Changin had (roughly) been thinking of as [concept and desire]. Then wouldn’t it be that just as [words] and [concepts] are connected, [material] and [desire] are also (roughly) connected? Anyway, our conclusion: only after attaching words can we erase them.

Today, while stretching a canvas, I thought, I enjoy material. To prepare a canvas for painting, you stretch it onto a frame and apply several layers of primer. This is a preparation process for painting, but I have no intention of painting. I stretch the canvas and apply molding paste on top. Apply it, sand it smoothly. Touch it. It feels finished, but it doesn’t quite seem finished. On a cooking show, someone comes out to compete with one perfectly grilled piece of meat. What would happen if someone brought out a perfectly cooked bowl of rice? Looking at the stretched canvas, I think it’s like a perfectly cooked bowl of rice. Suddenly, I think I should un-stretch the canvas. After pulling out the staples one by one from the primed canvas stretched on the frame and spreading it out, it looks quite beautiful. Then suddenly I think I should re-stretch this onto another frame. Would that count as a work? Stretch, prime, unstretch, restretch. What have I done?

I’ve been doing something similar in another way recently. I’ve been cutting up works I previously completed on canvas with molding paste and paint. I cut them into long strips and connect them vertically to make even longer strips. Of course, I stitched them together like sewing leather. I then attach that long strip to a piece of wood used for a canvas frame (one of the four sides, so essentially just a single wooden bar). I wanted to lean them against the wall in a row, so I made another one. (Still the question here: does flat painting require a wall…?) This process, too, involves painting on canvas and claiming it as a painting by attaching it to wood, then dismantling it again, cutting it, cutting the wood, and reassembling the dismantled parts to create something new. It’s the same format, but what has changed? Have I simplified it further and want to claim that this, too, can be painting? Is it like mixing bibimbap, then separating the ingredients again, slightly remixing them to make kimbap, and then saying this is also bibimbap? I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. Even so, I have to keep talking. Most of the words Changin and I exchanged have already disappeared, and only some weird things remain. If I want more weird things to remain, I have to talk more.

I also keep thinking about how to make the book I need to send to Hanna-san as a return gift. Receipts are enough. As long as there is writing on them and they can be folded and unfolded, that’s sufficient. Maybe insert a letter as well. Then should I cut the receipts in half, insert paper between them, and sew them together?