Science Against Modern Crime

Corpse and Mirror, 2001, encaustic on canvas, two panels, 72 x 37 inches.
River with Detail, 2003, encaustic on canvas, two panels. River 38 x 60 inches, Detail 28 x 24 inches.
Exhibits A, B & C, 2004, three panels. Lucy, Window and Lucy's View from her Window, 44 x 60 inches each panel.
Human Heart, 2005, 24 x 174 inches, based on a sequential echocardiogram of one complete cardiac cycle (a single heartbeat).
Problems in Fingerprinting the Dead, 2002, encaustic on canvas, 40 x 96 inches.
Altered Patterns, 2005, prints from John Dillinger's fingertips – mutilated in an attempt to conceal his identity, 20 x 63 in.
Span, 2001, encaustic on canvas, two panels, 32 x 96 inches.
Proof, 2004-06, encaustic on canvas, 48 x 32 inches and 48 x 36 inches.
Vestige, 2006, encaustic on canvas, 32 x 30 inches.

Fingerprint science becomes a metaphor for painting in the series Science Against Modern Crime. It’s, of course, a metaphor for what I’m doing when I’m making painting, but it also has to do with what we’re doing when we look at paintings. It has to do with what the poet Charles Olson referred to as enactment. The paintings in this series are about the examination of indexical marks and, like fingerprints, they are simply marks presented for comparison and examination. The surface of these paintings is physical, involving translucent layers and a literal depth that is not just suggestive of skin, it actually is a skin.

Charles Olson, credited as the first literary figure to use the term postmodern with pertinence to contemporary discourse, insisted that, “[art of value] does not seek to describe but to enact.”

Span

Span is a two-panel piece which addresses the importance of enactment in painting. Each panel depicts a deformity – two fingers that are webbed or grown together. The two panels of the diptych are then literally joined or spanned by an aggressive passage of gestural painting.

Human Heart

a more recent piece from Science Against Modern Crime – it was finished just a few months ago – is derived from two sources.

Problems in Fingerprinting the Dead

is a series of three sequential encaustic paintings based on an illustration from an FBI technical manual. The fingerprint has been lifted from “The Dance to the Music of Time” by Nicolas Poussin – an unremarkable allegorical picture in which, remarkably, the entire surface is embedded with fingerprints, all made by the same digit, presumably the artist’s own.

Randall Steeves

Paintings