Kate Bonner (MFA 12) in solo exhibition Much more than we know
et al. etc., 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco
January 28 – March 4, 2017
As I watch the CNC router
begin to cut, I argue with its machine mind choices: they don’t seem entirely
logical, but they aren’t intuitive either. It skips sections that I’m worried
it will forget, and I hold them in my mind with anxiety. I programmed the machine
but it decides on the sequence of cuts, sometimes choosing beauty over
efficiency? A spinning, finger-shaped router-blade draws an abstract line into
my wood panel, beginning with the longest interior path, waiting until the end
to find the outline.
The depth and weight of my Photoshop layers are difficult to
measure – because they are digital they seem shallow, but in mass they clog my
computer. This 1200 dpi, two-gigabyte file is too heavy to move — dropped in
the transfer from my computer to another via Wi-Fi. I flatten twenty layers
into one, permanently erasing hidden images, a loss that stings, and now the
digital file is nearly weightless: a light spray of acrylic ink onto the top of
wood panels.
The swipe of my finger on my track pad is like the swing of
my arm with spray paint, but the printer reduces my gestures to thin,
unimaginative recurring rows.
