MUSCLE UNCLE
SELECT SHOP FOR YOUR MIND
HAND PICKED BY QINXI YU & YI-CHANG YANG
Jun. 13, 2024
@mtchptrck
Brooklyn Army Terminal.140 58th St, Brooklyn, NY, 11220.
Gsdrapyereinng 2014.
2024,45 x 28.5 in.
Suspended 3d printed image, PETG,custom typeface/glyphs,wire,gel medium,photographs printed on aluminum and transparencies.
Detail of Gsdrapyereinng 2014.
Mitch Patrick's work explores the intricacies of image-making and photography, starting from the smallest marks made by hand, machine, and pixels. He primarily investigates the expression and function of pixels in digital images, designing nonsensical calligraphy and typefaces to connect the digital and physical realms. This approach delves into the history and abstract nature of digital images, emphasizing the importance of pixels as fundamental units. These nonsensical glyphs and caligraphics serve as an alphabet for pixels and physical marking systems, output through various media such as custom-made 3D printers and 2D plotters, creating larger, more expansive artworks. In this way, people can explore the smallest components of images and experience the various magnitudes encompassed by the artwork. Simultaneously, this method allows him to combine the practices of writing and digital photography, transforming images into physical “written” works.
Ospweinpe 2021.
36 X 48 in.
Pen and ink,and wax pencil on paper.
1. How does the asemic typefaces and glyphs contribute to the construction of the whole work?
They are the exposed infrastructure of my creative practice that will also serve the medium an artwork is executed in. My main process right now is 3d-printing these asemic typefaces that function as pixels. To get these pixels off of a screen, or a definitive flat substrate and into the world as a solid thing has been fascinating to me. It’s a very specific process, but I also have been exploring this process in drawing and video as well. When I consider images created from drawing, painting, photography, and up to the pixel, I've always been focused on exactly what the picture is made out of and how it can be witnessed undisguised to the viewer experiencing it. With the variety of media that are available to us, they are typically self-camouflaged to represent the content described in an artwork. These systems of mark + image making, are often decisively hidden or sometimes they are obvious descriptors of an artworks creation depending on the artist’s intent. In my work, I aim to coalesce the visibility of the medium, in most cases the pixel, and the physical mark by working off of a grid. In each piece I sparingly give it just enough resolution to describe the subject matter in an artwork while also not masquerading the glyph / mark-making systems they are made out of. It’s certainly a challenging pursuit, the more I try to distill this stuff to its essence, the more it seems to evade me.
TDuarumpohiiln 2023.
49.75 x 36.5 in.
Suspended 3d printed image,PETG,custom typeface/glyphs,wire,gel medium,and photograph from cellphone on aluminum.
2. How does this methodology affect your approach to photography, how do you decide what topic to work on？
I’m not exactly a photographer, but I am someone who takes pictures like everyone else. Lately I’ve been interested in the topic of passivity as a person who takes pictures and how that could inform an art practice. Pictures+videos are frequently abandoned and forgotten on our second brains (a smartphone with the Internet), so what do I do with all this stuff? How can I re-invent these autobiographical moments to be seen anew? With that being said, I’ve been going through a lot of older images I have taken on previously owned phones and devices. Digging up forgotten images is therapeutic, and re-working them into a time-consuming art practice allows me to slow down and experience an image that’s otherwise designated as refuse. My approach to photography comes from a pretty naive place, but the methodology I’ve put together to work with these types of images comes from a life-long interest in art making.
Ffeoerlingadpelaadnet 2019.
11 x 12 in.
Pen and ink on paper.
3. How did you develope the approach of using asemic typefaces and glyphs to image making？
Likely due to the proliferation of images we are constantly bombarded with on our screens. We spend a lot of time with pictures, they are the quickest means of communication, while reading today might be the slowest. Over the years, developing this approach to image making - I reckon I just want to slow images down and give the viewer an incentive to actually look at them for a few seconds longer. Each glyph, whether it is scrawled by hand or by machine, is my definition for the pixel or mark it is standing in for. This slowing down of images, potentially warrants one to carefully “read” the minutiae of a picture, while also seeing it at the same-time. It’s essentially a practice of distillation, while also it is my own re-invention of an image. Instead of a high resolution “glow-up”, I want a low-resolution “glow-down”.
Plt_6_Miles 2019.
30.5 x 33.5 in.
Suspended 3d printed image, PETG, custom typeface/glyphs,wire and gel medium.