During the brief but intense period during which Jackson Pollock worked with his drip-paintings he also experimented with a new figuration. Of all the paintings resulting from this experimentation, Out of the Web (1949) is considered the most important. Like other paintings from this period, Out of the Web is created from a tangle of winding strings of color, criss-crossed in an intricate pattern creating a vibrating web all-over. In this particular work, however, Pollock also used a knife to carve out the contours of a rhythmic sequence of bio-morph figures into the lacquered surface. He then scraped away the paint from these areas, exposing the crude board upon which the painting was created.

For me Pollock’s painting has become a catalyst for daring to carry out new experiments with my old motif depicting scenes from the market hills north of Kivik. On the slopes the grass has eroded in parts, exposing the underlying sand in patches and grooves. It is a sight that has occupied me since the seventies. Time has given me a dense web in which to insert visual images. During the work process a limited amount of units, which can be combined into different sequences, have crystallized. Today, I make use of digital picture manipulation and treat these sand rips as pure ready-mades. My goal has been to reach thematic changes with varied “conducting”: the landscape as score. I either block the shapes with templates cut directly from computer printouts or print the figurations onto the picture surface with silkscreen templates. The paint is squeezed through the screen – it literally comes out of the web.

Kivik, January 2008
Gert Aspelin