Jesse Bransford. Exhibition Card.
Radiance
Jesse Bransford, Details of Radiance, 2005, Dimensions variable, Latex paint, and graphite on wall.
Installation at Kevin Bruk Gallery (Destroyed).
Radiance Study
Jesse Bransford, Radiance Study, 2005, 16x12", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of the Linda Vega.
Labyrinth
Jesse Bransford, Labyrinth, 2005, 70x38.5", Acrylic, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of John and Sara Slesinger.
Solar Deity
Jesse Bransford, Solar Deity, 2005, 65"x41", Acrylic, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of the Artist.
Altar
Jesse Bransford, Altar, 2005, 78x42", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of Jeffrey Pechter.
Magic Square (Sun)
Jesse Bransford, Magic Square (Sun), 2005, 22.25x14", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of Jeffrey Pechter.
Untitled (Flare)
Jesse Bransford, Untitled (Flare), 2005, 22.25x14", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of Kevin Van Gorp.
Gnostic Stone
Jesse Bransford, Gnostic Stone, 2005, 6x9", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of the Artist.
Lion of the Sun
Jesse Bransford, Lion of the Sun, 2005, 75x47", Acrylic, ink, watercolor and graphite on paper.
Collection of Kevin Bruk.
Interview With Gean Moreno, Summer, 2005
Originally published in conjunction with the exhibition I = 111 (SOL) at Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami
Gean: Let’s begin with the narrative that underlines this exhibition and explain how it relates to future ones?
Jesse: The works in this exhibition are one group in a series of seven. Each set is organized around one of the observable planets of the solar system. This show is the 'sun' or 'solar' approach. All of my previous interests are here in the work – science, science fiction, the occult, etc. – but there has been a definite shift into what I call the Renaissance magical tradition. It is a totalizing system, yes, but it tries to unify ideas rather than debunk and usurp them. I also find this moment and the ideas I'm using as the foundation for the project to be a chiasmus of the ideas we as a culture have 'discarded' and the ones we so irresponsibly hold on to. Science and religion and magic were once the same thing. The more I research these ideas the more convinced I am that we need to re-examine the moment when our culture's categories became discreet.
Gean: Can you talk more specifically about these sun narratives that you are dealing with?
Jesse: The Renaissance magical tradition for me is one of the West's first conscious attempts at a kind of pluralism. Pico de la Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, John Dee, but especially for me Giordano Bruno and Cornelius Agrippa were these weird wandering academics who sought to unify the world's belief systems in a time of wars of religion. Very idealistic, and almost totally forgotten in the normal historical narratives. This has been my starting point, and from there I've done more research into other areas. It's not so much astrology as it is a combination of astrology, astronomy, number theory, magic, and comparative religion. The research has taken me to all of the world’s civilizations and I was especially surprised to see the Orient and Mesoamerica enter into the systems.
Gean: Can you explain the Renaissance magical tradition?
Jesse: Magic's a tricky term. I guess for me the interest is in a sense of direct agency. Whether or not somebody believes in it is beside the point. I think of it in a similar way that I think of science fiction. It's a portal into other territories. Renaissance magic is the 'last' moment in Western thought when magic was considered part of the world of knowledge (in a sense other than 'sociological' or 'anthropological'). I find it to be one of the last attempts by the West at a synthesis of other systems of thought. Now everything has to admit to scientific materialism, a state of affairs I have issues with. So for me the Renaissance magical tradition represents a kind of agency, created or not, that stands as a historical record of things we as a society have supposedly turned our backs on. But of course in reality these ideas have parlance, even if only in the margins.
Gean: An important aspect of your project is its concern with what can be called counter-narratives of knowledge, the knowledge that didn't quite make into the Cartesian structuring of discourse and consciousness. You create these Borgesian counter-encyclopedias of "discarded" knowledge.
Jesse: Borges is always on my mind. So many of his stories talk about discarded knowledge. I probably have a different take on him than some. I find stories like 'The Library of Babel' really hopeful and joyous - the idea that no matter how hard we try nature and the Real are always going to wriggle out from under our thumb. That's what I find so compelling in these 'counter-narratives' I keep coming back to. Not only do they continue to exist and object to their obsolescence, most have an un-finishable quality that really puts the screws to our culture's assumptions about its privileged status. Not that these systems don't have their own set of limitations...
Gean: An interesting aspect in Borges is that he often sought an architectural or spatial analog for the concept that he set out to explore in a story. There is the Library in "The Library of Babel," the ancient amphitheater in "The Circular Ruins," etc. I was wondering if you could say something in the shift in your project from wall paintings to larger enveloping environmental efforts and how this relates to the situation of the viewer.
Jesse: I want the viewer implicated in their experience of the work. After all, they are the other half (third?) of the equation completing the circuit. I don't think I'm directing the viewer's experience, mostly due to the arcane nature of what I'm working with. All I can do is hope that one of the routes of entry I provide is actually available to them. From there I'm just as interested to hear how the viewer digests the work as anyone - a tenet of most of these counter-narratives is that the process IS the end.
When I found myself drawing on the walls, I was forced to think about architecture in a literal, concrete way. The word ‘architecture’ was coming up more and more as I thought about our changing relationship to our bodies with the computer and the internet. What struck me was how un-architectural 'computer architecture' is and how physical actual architecture is. As I made more and more wall works, I realized that I wanted the experience to relate this un-architectural feeling with the physical experience of an architectural site. In my head this simultaneity makes many of the broad concepts (counter-narrativity among them) literal on the formal level as well as the concept level.
Gean: How do you feel about misreadings?
Jesse: Misreadings are a part of the process for me. To be honest I've realized over the years that I've even misread some of the symbols. This goes back to what I was saying about process over product. I'm much more interested in the image/symbol's life in consciousness, and that means that it's always changing. There are always going to be preposterous misreadings, but I feel those kinds of misreadings, in their spectacular distortion, have plenty to say about whatever image I'm using. This relationship changes when the work starts being seen through the medium of language (reviews, essays etc.), but that seems different to me...
Gean: Your work tip-toes on the line between the semiotic and the visual. By this I mean that your materials are less the paints and inks that you use than a series of arcane sign systems, symbols, and mediated imagery.
Jesse: These signs and symbols have lives and histories of their own and an image gets reapplied, reused and re-articulated over time. What I'm most interested in is that this reuse doesn't destroy the images capacity for meaning, but rather that it increases its use value and when you become aware of the historical dimension of an image, the reality of the image changes. I guess you could call it a kind of hyper-reality. Sun (and all the other visible planets for that matter) have meanings in every culture we've ever known about - by poking and prodding I've found several versions of the idea of sun that aren't so prevalent in the present moment. This introduces a notion of hyper-reality that isn't just critical of 'reality' but actively perturbs 'reality's' foundations. The viewers preconceived notions they bring to an image get challenged and potentially modified.
Gean: In closing, let’s talk about the idea of scripted spaces, sites that have a narrative inscribed in the architecture, like, say, Tomorrowland or Medieval Times. Obviously, your work doesn’t employ a pop cultural narrative of this sort, but it seems to borrow the 'scripted space' logic of entertainment design, i.e., it strives to turn architecture (or the exhibition site) into narrative.
Jesse: I studied information architecture and design in the late 90s, originally in relation to the web and the internet, but I increasingly felt a relation to my thinking about the work. It's funny how Disneyland is always invoked as the 'ideal' for experience design. I actually see some of the best 'architectural narratives' in Medieval architecture. The idea is also explicit in Renaissance garden design. I think we don't think of them first because the 'scripts' that are being presented in these places we no longer understand. When I first started thinking about murals and architecture it was mostly in relation to the 'unreality' of what I was depicting. I was very interested in actualizing an illusion in a space that is not only illusory in its relation to physical space, but also to reality in general. It's funny, I just realized this, but the connection between the entertainment spaces we think of in experience design and the historical analogs I mentioned is an idea of ritual or magic - in every case the subject's verbal, visual and somatic faculties are directed through a series of experiences in the interest of a goal.
Gean: Let’s begin with the narrative that underlines this exhibition and explain how it relates to future ones?
Jesse: The works in this exhibition are one group in a series of seven. Each set is organized around one of the observable planets of the solar system. This show is the 'sun' or 'solar' approach. All of my previous interests are here in the work – science, science fiction, the occult, etc. – but there has been a definite shift into what I call the Renaissance magical tradition. It is a totalizing system, yes, but it tries to unify ideas rather than debunk and usurp them. I also find this moment and the ideas I'm using as the foundation for the project to be a chiasmus of the ideas we as a culture have 'discarded' and the ones we so irresponsibly hold on to. Science and religion and magic were once the same thing. The more I research these ideas the more convinced I am that we need to re-examine the moment when our culture's categories became discreet.
Gean: Can you talk more specifically about these sun narratives that you are dealing with?
Jesse: The Renaissance magical tradition for me is one of the West's first conscious attempts at a kind of pluralism. Pico de la Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, John Dee, but especially for me Giordano Bruno and Cornelius Agrippa were these weird wandering academics who sought to unify the world's belief systems in a time of wars of religion. Very idealistic, and almost totally forgotten in the normal historical narratives. This has been my starting point, and from there I've done more research into other areas. It's not so much astrology as it is a combination of astrology, astronomy, number theory, magic, and comparative religion. The research has taken me to all of the world’s civilizations and I was especially surprised to see the Orient and Mesoamerica enter into the systems.
Gean: Can you explain the Renaissance magical tradition?
Jesse: Magic's a tricky term. I guess for me the interest is in a sense of direct agency. Whether or not somebody believes in it is beside the point. I think of it in a similar way that I think of science fiction. It's a portal into other territories. Renaissance magic is the 'last' moment in Western thought when magic was considered part of the world of knowledge (in a sense other than 'sociological' or 'anthropological'). I find it to be one of the last attempts by the West at a synthesis of other systems of thought. Now everything has to admit to scientific materialism, a state of affairs I have issues with. So for me the Renaissance magical tradition represents a kind of agency, created or not, that stands as a historical record of things we as a society have supposedly turned our backs on. But of course in reality these ideas have parlance, even if only in the margins.
Gean: An important aspect of your project is its concern with what can be called counter-narratives of knowledge, the knowledge that didn't quite make into the Cartesian structuring of discourse and consciousness. You create these Borgesian counter-encyclopedias of "discarded" knowledge.
Jesse: Borges is always on my mind. So many of his stories talk about discarded knowledge. I probably have a different take on him than some. I find stories like 'The Library of Babel' really hopeful and joyous - the idea that no matter how hard we try nature and the Real are always going to wriggle out from under our thumb. That's what I find so compelling in these 'counter-narratives' I keep coming back to. Not only do they continue to exist and object to their obsolescence, most have an un-finishable quality that really puts the screws to our culture's assumptions about its privileged status. Not that these systems don't have their own set of limitations...
Gean: An interesting aspect in Borges is that he often sought an architectural or spatial analog for the concept that he set out to explore in a story. There is the Library in "The Library of Babel," the ancient amphitheater in "The Circular Ruins," etc. I was wondering if you could say something in the shift in your project from wall paintings to larger enveloping environmental efforts and how this relates to the situation of the viewer.
Jesse: I want the viewer implicated in their experience of the work. After all, they are the other half (third?) of the equation completing the circuit. I don't think I'm directing the viewer's experience, mostly due to the arcane nature of what I'm working with. All I can do is hope that one of the routes of entry I provide is actually available to them. From there I'm just as interested to hear how the viewer digests the work as anyone - a tenet of most of these counter-narratives is that the process IS the end.
When I found myself drawing on the walls, I was forced to think about architecture in a literal, concrete way. The word ‘architecture’ was coming up more and more as I thought about our changing relationship to our bodies with the computer and the internet. What struck me was how un-architectural 'computer architecture' is and how physical actual architecture is. As I made more and more wall works, I realized that I wanted the experience to relate this un-architectural feeling with the physical experience of an architectural site. In my head this simultaneity makes many of the broad concepts (counter-narrativity among them) literal on the formal level as well as the concept level.
Gean: How do you feel about misreadings?
Jesse: Misreadings are a part of the process for me. To be honest I've realized over the years that I've even misread some of the symbols. This goes back to what I was saying about process over product. I'm much more interested in the image/symbol's life in consciousness, and that means that it's always changing. There are always going to be preposterous misreadings, but I feel those kinds of misreadings, in their spectacular distortion, have plenty to say about whatever image I'm using. This relationship changes when the work starts being seen through the medium of language (reviews, essays etc.), but that seems different to me...
Gean: Your work tip-toes on the line between the semiotic and the visual. By this I mean that your materials are less the paints and inks that you use than a series of arcane sign systems, symbols, and mediated imagery.
Jesse: These signs and symbols have lives and histories of their own and an image gets reapplied, reused and re-articulated over time. What I'm most interested in is that this reuse doesn't destroy the images capacity for meaning, but rather that it increases its use value and when you become aware of the historical dimension of an image, the reality of the image changes. I guess you could call it a kind of hyper-reality. Sun (and all the other visible planets for that matter) have meanings in every culture we've ever known about - by poking and prodding I've found several versions of the idea of sun that aren't so prevalent in the present moment. This introduces a notion of hyper-reality that isn't just critical of 'reality' but actively perturbs 'reality's' foundations. The viewers preconceived notions they bring to an image get challenged and potentially modified.
Gean: In closing, let’s talk about the idea of scripted spaces, sites that have a narrative inscribed in the architecture, like, say, Tomorrowland or Medieval Times. Obviously, your work doesn’t employ a pop cultural narrative of this sort, but it seems to borrow the 'scripted space' logic of entertainment design, i.e., it strives to turn architecture (or the exhibition site) into narrative.
Jesse: I studied information architecture and design in the late 90s, originally in relation to the web and the internet, but I increasingly felt a relation to my thinking about the work. It's funny how Disneyland is always invoked as the 'ideal' for experience design. I actually see some of the best 'architectural narratives' in Medieval architecture. The idea is also explicit in Renaissance garden design. I think we don't think of them first because the 'scripts' that are being presented in these places we no longer understand. When I first started thinking about murals and architecture it was mostly in relation to the 'unreality' of what I was depicting. I was very interested in actualizing an illusion in a space that is not only illusory in its relation to physical space, but also to reality in general. It's funny, I just realized this, but the connection between the entertainment spaces we think of in experience design and the historical analogs I mentioned is an idea of ritual or magic - in every case the subject's verbal, visual and somatic faculties are directed through a series of experiences in the interest of a goal.
