2011
Tape and Paint on Paper
97 x 72 cm

This work originated as the byproduct or refuse of the production of another piece. Used as an underlay for painting a sculpture not available to the viewer, it is at once a painting and something more, its imprints and outlines insisting on the existence of an object beyond the scope of the medium. As such, the paper becomes a surface onto which the viewer projects his or her notions of the absent object. Still, its value as an art-object in its own right is clearly asserted in its presentation. Though unpremeditated, the composition is striking, drawing energy from the tension between its fortuitous smears and drippings, and the diagrammatic, blue-print like outlines of the unknown sculpture. Lacking both the intentionality and the materiality of sculpture, No Better Cure Than Business is a vivid demonstration of the unilateral transformative power of the gaze in defining art. The title is a wry nod to the power of the art market and of artistic consumption to assign worth. What then is the value of labor or intent? Though the piece might be taken as an ironic illustration of the random nature of what we call art, or even a paean to unproductiveness and chance, it is also evidence of labor, a schema for the process of developing a vision. Indeed in some senses it is the embodiment of the artist’s labor, an unedited record of his motions.

Text by Amanda DeMarco