SAME CLOTH.

THERE IS A CODED LANGUAGE FOR COMMUNICATING WITH THOSE UP ABOVE, passing aircrafts. Survivalists exchange knowledge of these ground symbols online, for when stranded, God knows where; lost in the wilderness. Survivalists are people who spend their entire lives preparing to stay alive. N = NO, Y = YES, ◻ = NEED MAP AND COMPASS;

LL = ALL IS WELL, seems like a lot of trouble to say everything’s fine.

Saxon Quinn’s canvas were drop-sheets to his last paintings. They’ve been stepped on, walked all over; weathered, under the load of ambition. Transporting the mess of another’s expression, back and forth, bull hauling restless pig, the creative unconscious. In other words, stained in full spectrum colour, mistakes and missteps sprayed like a forensic blood spatter analysis of the alive and kicking, the canvas has received the life treatment.

Supposedly Jasper Johns only interest was in dealing with “things the mind already knows”: maps, numbers, the American flag. Things that are seen but not looked at. Facts in unmarked vehicles parked in plain sight. If you ever find yourself in the middle of nowhere, a James Turrell installation may be nearby. Turrell cuts a hole in the roof, illuminates everything surrounding it and literally, gives you a window to the sky. Now, the hole is new but the big blue isn’t. Perhaps, if you want to see the light, and it’s an awful, sickly, evangelist tang in the mouth saying it, but, perhaps it does matter what you’re framing your little slice of heaven with. The canvas has received the life treatment.

Saxon Quinn puts four walls around you and an attentive bunch of freaks; skulls with movie star smiles, satanic dogs, and the most kissable heart shaped set of lips, on a face lonely with nothing else on it. You’re staring at the collective psyche bathroom wall. Looks like a zone of 50 now but they were all one once, a 5 x 2 meter whole. “I chose you Liam Payne” “FREE BRITNEY. FREE PALESTINE.” “IGGY IS GOD.” “JESUS WOULDN’T DO COKE IN THE BATHROOM”.They’re fighting, fucking, laughing. Its ugly, chaotic and kinda sweet. Funny mirrors floor to ceiling, and all of them, every last one, you. Portraits of the artist portraits of you, in one or a bundle of twenty-seven industry-certified emotions. Mad, happy, sad, how the spoon found the mouth is yours and yours only, but once it's in tastes all the same. 

“When people walk away from my shows I want them to feel something,” Quinn says. Before we had feelings there were accidents of the soul, passions and moral sentiments. The drawings of a child! Lunatic! COMMUNISTS! was what people were saying, seeing the artwork of 1940’s European art movement CoBrA, Saxon Quinn’s paintings pay respect to. Death is a painting and not a sculpture because we only see it from one side. And maybe this is a surprise to some, but you already died, and more than a couple times. This you and that you. It melts in your mind not in your mouth.  

Children suck at gambling, they’re showing you their cards, tipping and swaying like its last-call-o’clock aboard the Casino Queen. No poker face, a royal flush of thoughts, feelings and emotions. Then we see their paintings and we become transfixed, studying them, hoping for any insight into their still-loading little minds. Children make the mysterious simple and the simple mysterious. So we’re looking, leaning back on the chair, trying to peep answers from the paper to our right. Twisting nozzles on the radio, searching for the frequency, to hear those sounds again, those old accidents of the soul. Nothing sounds like it used to.  

Seeing those eyes of yours, almond just like hers. Your Mother doesn’t accuse you of robbing her blind; there’s no black market for genetics just like there’s no bootleg sadness no counterfeit contempt. They get carved in, along with all the other gems and junk sticker bombed and tagged on a shared wall. Paint over. Begin again. Born. Died. You may be wonderful but you’re nothing special. THERE IS A CODED LANGUAGE FOR COMMUNICATING WITH THOSE UP ABOVE. LL.

WORDS BY MORGAN MEIER 4 AT THE ABOVE GALLERY