Ronald Leax – To Delineate as a Map: An Analogical Mapping Practice

Base Cap Notions

Map: To delineate as on a map, also to explore, survey, etc.

To chart the course of; to plan in detail.

I am an object and image maker. I operate within the dynamics of matter and idea. The studio is the environment where these dynamics interact. It is my base camp of physical stuff: the equipment, supplies, library, and headquarters of thought and making. The studio is full of accumulated materials and preoccupations. It is the assembly base camp. It is the place of start, development, and finish. In the studio, I give myself permission to be messy and to travel through physicality, possibilities, and constrictions of matter. I enjoy a wrestling match, a portage, with imagination articulations. It is the battery pack, the resource. I fear the absolute, the climax, the conventional, rules, prescription, proscription, and dependence. I value the confusions and potentialities of independence. I enjoy the privileges and accept the responsibilities.

Ontology: What Is Real

Ontology: The science of being or reality; the branch of knowledge that investigates the nature, essential properties and relations of being.

I am curious about the phenomenon of being, of what is real. Questions—what if, why not, is there more, is something missed—more to inform decisions and make more interesting exciting forms. The oscillation between the corporeal/conceptual and the body/mind conundrum is the geography. The tension of being in this space is a Cartesian atmosphere. It is a bio-cycle. It is a making cycle. It is a multiplicity of incidents and a simultaneous turmoil; chaos and emergence. Contact and connection is by both coincidence and consideration. Slippery, temporal, bonding, and fugitive, these actions of the boundaries of making. These are the territories of being. The art is the maker of being. The work is the location of the limits of the corporeal material and form, and the conceptual articulation. It is always unsatisfying and inadequate.

Epistemology: How We Know

Epistemology: The theory or science of the method and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity.

I navigate the forms knowing the range of knowledge(s) through comparative systems and “systems tell their own lies and then believe them” (Jacob Bronowski). With the exceptions of laws of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, my knowledge systems are constructed, arbitrary, and subject to major errors of bias. My systems of perception, interpretation, and application must be taken with large grains of salt and tolerance. I do try to weigh evidence-based information and imagination/speculation. Knowing by revelation generates insight but is unreliable. Knowledge by history can generate a cascade of errors. My journey through knowledge is fragile and careful but not intimidated. However the challenges and curiosities that create this position are the critical attitudes of accurate knowing. The particular work is the “blaze” mark. The body of work is the map to the real.

Teleology: Purpose

Teleology: Examination of the design and purpose especially in nature.

I am ambivalent about, if not skeptical of, of the concept of purpose even though on a primary level my activity and behavior is purposeful to make art. But Darwin’s dilemma of purpose versus pointlessness, that nature, life, and by extension being is insignificant and pointless is a real quandary. My actions as an artist, perhaps, are only a resistance. I make art to make purpose and meaning. If this is pointless, I do not matter. If it is purposeful, I matter. My work matters. I wrestle with Darwin constantly. I abdicate to the comfort of Pascal’s roll of the dice too often. I prefer the contest of the wrestling match with Darwin’s dangerous ideas.