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Lot Essay
I see a Japanese calyx-shaped thing, is a beautiful and sublime work of intricate two-dimensionality. From Walker's best known series, these works confound the idea of their very form. As is consistent with his oeuvre, these are appropriated images and whatever themes or emotions they illicit is a way of drawing attention to frivolous Pop-Freudian emotions.
By using a reflective rather than ink black Rorschach blot, Walker "adds another 'empty space', a double-negative far more disquieting in the ambiguous visual experience it induces." (Art Forum, New York, April 2005, p. 152). What is so subversive about the experience is rather than viewing what can be called an image created by one's psyche, we see the more recognizable and infinitely more damming image of oneself, the viewer.
The color and quality of the work then is subjective as it takes on the qualities of its reflection, be it in the space it occupies or what is reflected by its surface. The value you wish to assign then becomes a statement perhaps more telling than any original Rorschach - what do you want to be today?
Indeed, this is an active antagonism on behalf of the artist. As he states in regards to his admiration for Warhol, "(His) work seemed much more intuitive, which I liked because of its direct expression, often in the form of a failed self-negation coupled with violence." (Art Forum, New York, October 2004).
By using a reflective rather than ink black Rorschach blot, Walker "adds another 'empty space', a double-negative far more disquieting in the ambiguous visual experience it induces." (Art Forum, New York, April 2005, p. 152). What is so subversive about the experience is rather than viewing what can be called an image created by one's psyche, we see the more recognizable and infinitely more damming image of oneself, the viewer.
The color and quality of the work then is subjective as it takes on the qualities of its reflection, be it in the space it occupies or what is reflected by its surface. The value you wish to assign then becomes a statement perhaps more telling than any original Rorschach - what do you want to be today?
Indeed, this is an active antagonism on behalf of the artist. As he states in regards to his admiration for Warhol, "(His) work seemed much more intuitive, which I liked because of its direct expression, often in the form of a failed self-negation coupled with violence." (Art Forum, New York, October 2004).