Clouds?, 2019 

by Scott Lyall

archival digital print

24 x 18 in (61 x 46 cm) unframed

edition of 10

1.  Hubert Damisch proposed /cloud/ as a pictorial signifier.  As a signifier, /cloud/ was a pictorial equivalent of words that could be spoken, written, or thought.  Usually, it appeared as an accretion of colour, lacking a well-defined linear contour.  But /cloud/ didn’t have to resemble clouds.  As an aggregate of marks, it registered the material trace of painting as a transitive verb.

2.   Meteorological clouds are also aggregates. Generally, a cloud is defined as an accretion of tiny particles suspended in the air. Its parts are water, ice, and pollutants, with air as the common atmospheric medium. To appear (and to inspire both poets and painters), the particles in clouds must reach a minimum size, registering in the visible spectrum of light. Otherwise, they cannot be distinguished from the “rest” of the materials making up “empty space” or “air.” 

3.   Because it is made of sub-visible informatic particles, a Nanofoil picture works poorly as a photograph. It thus evades pictorial documentation.  I wondered, however, if Damisch’s /cloud/ could help translate the Nanoscale particles into colourful, stable, reproducible images. I decided to use the density of natural clouds as a device to solve this problem.

4.  To register the negative dimension of this simplification, I included an overlay motif—the stylized grid I call “Dragon’s Scales.”

5.   Finally, the aspect of these images recalls the shape of a typical smart phone, set into an abstract Apple-white ground. The colours, which are vaguely nebular, gassy, or explosive, are of course meant only to be enjoyed.

-Scott Lyall