ROBERTMMICKENSART.COM
THE TUBES a video drawing
Now being exhibited at the LEACH GALLERY, Montclair, NJ
The tubes.
Along the quickly narrowing line of worldly engagement, sitting up, back to my pillow with my head checking out -my hand has something to say.
Without a censor, and just too drowsy to care, a scratch, and scrawl of something- scribbled on cheap cardboard.
At first comical
After creating 200, a person has to consider… why?
Now the tubes have recorded the day on the everyday consumer throwaway item. In the process here was fury, fight, confusion and lust , love, and musing while stewing obsessively. Organically, my sleepy body hummed with digestion, slumped with fatigue, quivered, dozing off. Giving up control I remember pen to cardboard on the tubes!
My sleepy weakening logic fought to maintain dominance, it vigilantly added and subtracted, it calculated the angle of incidence carrying my slowly sinking self into my truthful wishful dreams. But logic lost.
Circling above all of this, I dream my pajamas are looking foolish just like the inhabitant. Over and over, and over and over, and then never again.
The tubes multiply , a visual journal counting nothing profound. Until they add up one Bounty and Charmin after another.
My wheel of heaven written on my trash.
MICKENS
Welcome to the Mickens artwork webpages. My visual art questions the value of the phenomena that surrounds us all day long and into our dreaming night:
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Images!
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With off-kilter pattern forms, divergent color palettes, rusted scribbled textures, and sarcastic lines trying to mindlessly and hopefully purely to evoke- something that engages.
Intended as a door intentionally left open. The biases, and the dreams of the viewer will poison, or enhance the perception. Add any word to the image, and the ever seeking wheels of our human condition work overtime seeking a meaning. Maybe in the form of a chuckle, a buzz, a sneeze, a story about a nun in the third grade, or a severe reaction of contempt.
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-Robert M. Mickens 12-2023
