Beyond Order and Structure

The images I am showing in Luxe, Calme et Volupte are originally HTML-coded tables with colored cells rendered as an image by a web browser. I make one HTML drawing every day to post on my blog: chrisashley.net/weblog.

The images are made in series which are intended as a single body of work. Later they are captured as digital files and printed. My blog is a studio wall, gallery, and archive.

HTML is a simple medium with many limitations. It is inherently and inescapably geometric, consisting of right angles, straight edges, and flat, smooth, even surfaces. I find a great deal of freedom working within these limitations.

The images I make are typically called “abstract.” They reference and allude to the real world. I print the HTML images in order to make an art object that occupies physical space in the real world. This gives me the opportunity to “frame” the images on a wall inside a room, rather than being framed by a browser window on a monitor.

In a medium where it's easy to make perfectly measured grids the challenge is to go beyond given order and structure; there is still the impulse to make an image that is surprising, dynamic, and expressive. My goal is to make an image that the viewer relates to as something beyond a bunch of rectangles. I want to make images that encourage associations to nature, the body, place, thought, sound, language, social relations, and history.