Bas Sgraffito

gelatin-silver prints

various print sizes (6" x 9" up to 12" x 18")

2016

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A prevailing anxiety of the spiritually-minded is that [our] earnest, carefully articulated rituals and supplications may fall on deaf -- or altogether absent -- ears. This series contemplates the obverse: that our tone-deaf and haphazard gestures, our spiritually vacant routines, call up a spirit we are unaware of, rupturing a seam we would have assumed our tire tracks had sewn shut.

The photographs and drawings combine to form a taxonomy of these new ritualistic inscriptions. It is a vulgar proto-alphabet for modern divinations.

Inspired by the writings of novelist Joris Karl Huysmans and the music of Blanck Mass (Benjamin John Powers), this ongoing project may be understood as a paratext elaborating on some of the themes and motifs that prevail throughout my more strictly documentary projects.