ANDREW SHENKER : BORN 1968, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Through a course of studies in philosophy, my writing style moved away from the essay form to something more literary and poetic, culminating in a practice of drawing (and filming) that attempts to remain at the threshold of sleeping, waking and dreams – keeping to a skin-depth vulnerability of touch and endless sifting, which cannot help but to disturb a neutral, distant character of observation.

Rather, a kind of messiness and fragmentation cannot be avoided from the outset, and indeed remains throughout, despite the look of cohesion achieved when a stopping point is reached.

The element of surprise and the patience of waiting are crucial to this kind of basic effort, and, more than anything, perhaps, is the keeping of touch, in the touching, which tends towards a lack of control.

There is something necessarily allusive at the heart of this work, like a puzzle being pieced together in the absence of an image that would otherwise precede, constrain and guide us towards a knowable completion from the start.

The interpretations conjured thereby are not unlike parentheses, or cupped hands, trying to contain a thought which overflows them.