flâneur

Splat: the Art of Bjarne Melgaard - Travis Jeppesen

travisjeppesen.substack.com · 1,843 words · saved by 1 readers

The vehicle in a state of constant movement – across the canvas, across the floor. Across the continent. Jerking and swaying. Shivering and ejaculating. Cold sweat, hot sperm. Fueled by chemicals and paranoia, selves splattering themselves across surfaces already densely layered with previous splatterings, prior images covered over with brand new eruptions, tarnished and preserved, preserved through their tarnishment – the scriptophiliac splatter holds sway over any possible articulated Apollonian meaning. This is what it is to write with the body. Emotions can be extreme things when you have no real desire to control them. “[Bjarne] Melgaard’s art comes across as something much closer to need itself,” writes Jerry Saltz, “something maniacally important he’s trying to get at – even if he knows that in our oversaturated, defensively cynical moment that this is almost impossible… [the result is] death drive and life force in collision.” Sex and death: both aims driven by desire. United i

I. Scriptophiliac The vehicle in a state of constant movement – across the canvas, across the floor. Across the continent. Jerking and swaying. Shivering and ejaculating. Cold sweat, hot sperm. Fueled by chemicals and paranoia, selves splattering themselves across surfaces already densely layered with previous splatterings, prior images covered over with brand new eruptions, tarnished and preserved, preserved through their tarnishment – the scriptophiliac splatter holds sway over any possible articulated Apollonian meaning. This is what it is to write with the body. Emotions can be extreme…

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