Page 13 - Art First: Christopher Cook: a chance encounter on the way down

The graphites may be made with a wet medium, and therefore be more closely identified
with painting than with drawing, but each is a conscious act of construction. Removal,
wiping down and subtractive processes are equally a part of this constructive effort; and

the material presence of the marks differs strongly from the virtuoso effects of classical
Chinese ink painting. These subtractive processes became a strong part of Cook’s

prac tice in the period he began working on primed aluminium sheets, about which he
said to Kawamata: ‘Working on the aluminium each day means there is either a success

or it is a rehearsal for the following day.’ The evidence of beginning again and indeed [ ]
of some kind of struggle with the nature and logic of the image is one of the ways his
works communicate a seriousness of purpose to the viewer.

This is so even in one of the strangest inventions in the group, snare. It readily suggests
insect life and movement, conveying a sense of creatures busy in their world, as when
you disturb wood lice and centipedes, and they quickly scatter. But these vivid associ -
ations, though accepted, are not the final point. The nearest shape or blot has been care -

fully extended with a curved line marked by dots, to ensure that we read the blotted
deposit as some kind of beetle. Above it a group of smaller blots and marks are moving
forward and upward, one extending a longer feeler or leg. The contour, perhaps of a rock,
extends in the same overall diagonal movement up and to the left. An apparently cylindri -

cal lattice structure, carefully made, confirms this perspective view; but on closer exami -
n ation the cylinder is not a self-sufficient object. It is extended by dark liquid marks to
make an irregular enclosed area of ‘ground’, within which dots provide visual accents
−as though to provide different levels of noticing and recognition, some obvious, some

highly subtle. This may be the snare of the title−a trap for the oncoming insect, and also

transit query,
, graphite and oil on paper, x

cm