The Rumsfeld Matrix is an example of “the unknown” being negatively enhanced — I believe Rumsfeld wanted to disturb it and weaponize it. The idea actually became important to me after finishing my work for the show. This was the first time I used metal frames as an extension of the paintings and that process transformed my understanding of the unknown. The show itself was a way of talking to the uncertainty about what is cropped out when a canvas is stretched around a right-angled frame. Working on an unstretched canvas, which is the first step in the process, makes the painting feel like it could be extended freely, like an edge has been erased. The edges of my work then expanded to include frames, adding a new register of theatricality to the painting, and a renewed interest in the complicated history of the term “unknown.”

I love this idea from Birchall. It makes the unknown feel precious rather than foreboding. Foucault described the unknown as “the hidden presence of the sacred,” and I think my interest in this word actually comes from a lapsed Catholicism. I remember having a strong feeling of anxiety as a child when I considered the question: “If not death, then what?” I was brought up in London by my mother’s family who had immigrated from India in the 1960s. The collisions of these displaced languages — cultural, religious, and technological — clearly instilled in me a reflective focus on the unknown and the inside.

Yes, well, the perspective that comes from turning figuration inside, exploring the thingness inside. I’m interested in televising or mediating the inside, broadcasting it. Creating a place where you can’t tell if you’re looking inside or the inside is looking back at you. It’s spooky.

Well, first I collect images and create digital collages. Then I draw this material out for painting. The screen is very important. The metal of the frame then brings a density to the painting, like a bone, that is also in conversation with the outside, surrounding space. It draws attention to the painting’s inability to exist without leaning or relying on something, but, in this vulnerability, it remains open. I think this works with painting because people don’t expect it, given the history and self-importance of the medium. It’s misbehaving.

Dealing with color is something I feel I’m constantly developing and where the process of painting comes into its own. I’d describe the colors I use as feverish. I think it’s the first thing people notice. I love Ed Paschke’s use of color, he painted like there was an electrical charge in the canvas or something synaptic about the palette — as if it was sparking connections.

I’m starting to learn more about metal, which is helping me better navigate the border between the materials. In metal casting, there is a moment where the sand is pumped with CO2 to freeze it into shape using what looks like a breathing tube, and then the hot metal is poured in like a digestive system. Steve Whitton, who made the metal casts with me and works in an incredible, Brueghel-esque workspace, has been invaluable in this.

I’m working on a presentation at Art O Rama in August. The works have gotten a bit bigger and I’ve started to allow the collage material I normally use in the paintings to seep into the frames. It’s like a collage translated into large, cast aluminum. They look sci-fi-like, unintentionally but unavoidably.

I do think of painting as a technology, in so far as it has the ability to mirror objects and compute and sort through ideas. There’s something about the images that I start with and the way I play with their digital forms that always makes me think of the “signals” they are sending. In this sense, the images interact into abstraction, as this air-like, transparent material, that reflects their digital origins. On that note —- I’m interested in sound in relation to painting, what sound do the objects in the painting make? Sometimes I choose objects to paint because of their sound rather than their appearance. The canvas can be a place of transmission, an echo from the edges.

I don’t think art should reliably look political or pretend that it can pragmatically change things. But art requires artists to drop out, challenge preconceptions, and pronounce autonomy from the system. I also don’t think art should be twee, which we know when we see it. Twee art is bad art and twee art is definitely not political.

I can see how my focus on the inside might obscure a potential call to direct action. But in the most general sense, I think my work explores the politics of the body within a collective psychic space. This relationship between the paintings and their surrounding space feels like it can be mined to talk about conflicts within perception.

At Art O Rama I’m building on the lexicon of the wrought iron railings that are all around London and that demarcate private space — the boundaries of what someone understands as their “inside.” I noticed that these iron fences, which often imitate flora, were staging nature in metal, making up for the loss of shared public space by mirroring the outside world. I think this reflects the way that technology embeds itself into our lives, mirroring what feels most natural to us and making us feel at home within the simulation. In London, these railings punctuate our subconscious as we navigate the city.

Yes, on one hand, London is a productive city and on the other, it’s a product that works on behalf of the ruling class. The wrought iron railings I am talking about became cast iron railings and then were distributed and installed around the Empire like a slogan.

What the city doesn’t televise is something like an underground scene — a community of artists who are self-reliant and contribute a narrative, away from the eyes of the rarified art world. You said once that my work seemed to be more indicative of the concerns of our expanded friend group, the fluidity of that experimentation between people, which painting rarely tries to embody. I love that and think those kinds of groups, which interrelate work and community, often go unnoticed.

Oh wow, yeah, the manifesto! I remember being obsessed with manifestos early on. Maybe there would actually be something tongue-in-cheek about dropping a manifesto today. The era of manifestos was a time when collective movements circulated ideas around in a certain way — they were a means of doubling down to create a greater effect. The way that ideas are established and shared has altered since then, and so has the kind of collective consciousness that holds together a coherent artistic movement. My experience is that if one sets out with very particular goals it gets quite sticky when one comes into contact with reality. My starting point is never defined, but something is found anyway. There’s a quote from Charles Ray that I like where he talks about looking at how artists deal with mistakes as a measure of their ability. So I think, in that vein, the starting point is also always there to be broken.