"Art is not a crossword puzzle": An essay by Deric Carner (Keywords: Artistic Practice;Embodiment;Materiality; Intuition;Experimentation)
- Deric Carner
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
From The Philosopher, vol. 109, no. 4 (Thinking Otherwise).
You can order the digital copy of all our previous issues here.
If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation.
The Philosopher is unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated.
If you snuck into my studio at night you might hit your head on a disjointed limb or a furry part hanging from the ceiling. Turning on a light you might wonder if you had stumbled upon a goblin’s workshop where creatures are magically assembled from mud and glass beads. Rough pieces are strewn about, pale and dusty, with arms akimbo waiting to be touched. It is not a place for clear-headed thinking. It is a place to get dirty and carried away with the work of confronting the imaginary with the actual. I see sculpture implicating the viewer’s body by being in the same space and of the same scale as the viewer. My objects are open to interpretation but resonate with the viewers’ own understanding of their bodies. They hold a certain dream or fear which may be unlocked by the viewer. At times there is identification and rapprochement with ideas beyond the material, other times there is horror and alienation bound up in twisted parts. The work whispers of pleasures and pains, of body dysmorphia and queer kinks.
The longer I work as a sculptor, the more I understand art to come from the whole body rather than an aloof mind directing hands. Ideas divorced from practice and experimentation are dull and mean. This is not to say my work is anti-intellectual or purely expressive like a wild gesture. I think about a lot of things and I bring a trunkful of living to the studio, but I am suspicious of what we call the intellect. Decisions and understanding may have been thought through a long time ago, or may have been the result of a passing mood. What undesirable agenda am I echoing unsourced? My “thoughtful” ideas can turn out to be very foolish and unproductive. What we call poetically “the heart” may not lie in the physiological heart, but nor does it live in the brain alone. It is better to start with a simple idea and let the body invest it with meaning through the praxis of action and play. Take a mediocre thing and overwrite it with the texture of the lived-in, the knowledge of a thousand repetitions. It is the whole body that interprets the world in the present.
The longer I work as a sculptor, the more I understand art to come from the whole body rather than an aloof mind directing hands. Ideas divorced from practice and experimentation are dull and mean.
I use plaster in an additive manner (applied by hand rather than poured into a mould) to make smooth and textured bodies over armatures of paper, foam, trash. I sometimes embed discarded materials from home goods and sports equipment. My work is slow and iterative with many stops along the way when things are decided. The labour involved in the work allows me to think and note where decisions come from and often the hands seem to do most of the thinking. This suggests a deep brain function of practice like driving which once mastered is not conscious and is a true coordination of a body and mind. Critics sometimes distinguish craft from art in this way, but I do not see the split. Craft is doing something in the way you were told, a repetition without invention. Art is a voyage of discovering new ways of doing something, doing things incorrectly, doing things intuitively rather than programmatically. In my work many ideas are discovered accidentally by moving things around, taking parts from one project, and adding them to another. This playfulness opens my thinking and expectation to unpredictable outcomes. But then there seems to be a kind of autonomy to the work, where my cognitive role is to recognize a good move when it happens.
Occasionally I make artwork by picturing it entirely and then sketch it out and build it. This seems to come from my mind, but if it pops up fully formed, where did it develop? More often ideas emerge from cycles of imaginative picturing, experimental play and limbic expressions. I usually start with undirected sketching or daydreaming and drawing whatever I see in my mind’s eye. Sometimes I simply start to play with materials until a form appears like a Michelangelo Slave. This is the feeling that a given material “wants” to be something, that it is a creature with its own drives and desires but somehow trapped in a state of unexpressedness. The only way to release them is to experiment and edit until it “feels right”. If it is not right, it sits in a corner for months or years until a mood strikes to push it around some more until whatever wants to emerge finally does. I often have the sense that I am a gardener, entering the studio to tend to my objects, pruning and weeding. I have a sense of ownership, but where does the work come from if not entirely from me? Am I picking up on “things in the air” or a more profound “universal”? Is my mind synthesizing years of observation and experience as background processes and delivering them to my consciousness? It is hard for us to admit how little control the rational and textual layers of our minds have in relation to the whole of our body and mind.
Art ultimately is about ambiguity, and to rob the viewer of this experience is a crime.
Usually, the last step after a piece is completed is accounting for it through writing. Writing tells the objects’ story to others. This post-rationalization can lead to some silly narratives but is also a fun space to play in. This is where the intrinsic is linked to the external world, like hidden organs being explained by a doctor or a shaman. The coy nudge of a title or backstory can draw attention to latent aspects of the work or disrupt a simple interpretation. If you tell people what a thing is, there is little room for the unknown and the unexpected. Art ultimately is about ambiguity, and to rob the viewer of this experience is a crime. So when I make a story about my work, it is to leave a door open a crack for the viewer to enter. My texts are almost campier than the work itself and beg not to be taken seriously. What is camp but a plot to undermine authority from within the formal gardens of the palace? It is only through irony and self-parody that the fake walls of our thoughts are made visible. Material conditions, however, persist.
I used to make artwork to affect people, like “Wake up! Do you see this world we’re in?!” I imagined these publics in many ways, some rude and some fawning. But it was an arrogance and an affectation to try to lead people to a place of my choosing. I thought if I presented a set of signs and gestures the public would follow the breadcrumb trail to enlightenment. But art is not a crossword puzzle that can be solved. It is a full-body experience that produces relics. Now my work is created for itself and, like an autarchic realm, fulfils its own needs. Rather than being solipsistic, it is generous because it does not ask to be interpreted correctly. The viewer is as free as the creator. It should be recognized as the result of the freedom embodied in form. There is trace and complexity in the work which sits differently than conceptual or political artwork which sees itself as a vehicle of thought or pointed messages. This sense of intrinsic quality feels anti-modern, but it is really a grounding of narrative in actuality instead of a hypothesis. The latter suggests proof can be found whereas actual life betrays narrative in its materiality and deviation.
Deric Carner is a New York City-based artist and curator. He has had solo shows at Romer Young, Trestle Projects, Four AM, Louis V E.S.P., and Tent. Rotterdam. Group shows include at FIERMAN, PROTO Gallery, Radiator Gallery, Present Company, NurtureArt, Southern Exposure and Queens Nails. Recent curations include “Midtown” at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in 2021, “Ghost Chair” at Hamiltonian Gallery in 2019, and “If You Were in My Body” at FIERMAN in 2017. His publications have been presented at Printed Matter, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve, Witte de With, Rotterdam, ICA London, Istanbul Biennial and Kulturforum Berlin. Website: dericcarner.com.
First published online on 22nd March 2026.
If you enjoyed reading this, you can purchase the digital copy of this issue or any of our previous issues or consider becoming a Patreon member or making a donation.
The Philosopher is unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated.