Naked Guy & studies

Naked Guy.  What at title.  I didn’t mean for the piece to just be called “Naked Guy”, but after years of hanging in various apartments (or hiding in storage to try to prevent damage), I had just referred to him casually as “Naked Guy” so much that no other title would do.  I seem to recall the piece was actually supposed to be called “Vise”.  I really liked the dual meaning (a vise as in a clamp tool, and/or a vice as in an undesirable habit).

The purpose of this piece was supposed to be composition and really filling the entire surface of a large sheet of paper.  The smaller pieces to the right were exploratory studies, meant to inform or inspire the final piece.  I wanted to mix real, solid entities (the figure) with my abstract geometric shapes.  I wanted them to play off of one another, to get a sense of the scale of this made up universe because of the presence of the person.  I wanted to take all the things I had learned about figure drawing and geometric abstract space and mash them together.  I kinda succeeded.

Truth be told, I like the smaller study better than the large piece.  It was a better composition with much greater contrast.  More eye movement.  More anonymity.  But I was never great at filling large format paper and got a little carried away.  I misjudged the scale of the character vs the boxes and ended up with less boxes and less contrast.  Still, I love the piece and believe it’s one of the most pivotal pieces I made in my college career.

Ammi is wonderful and realized how much I cherish Naked Guy (Vise) and had a custom frame made that would house the final piece as well as the studies.  It means a great deal to me that Naked Guy now hangs in our living room.