Page 6 - Michael Ginsborg: Field Notes

can only help intuit new ideas and formulations, rather than prove them.
One might think then that, rather than acting like agents of truth and
fact, diagrams propose a certain speculative or, at the very least inter -
pre tative, approach. The particular kind of knowledge diagrams hold
is ‘impure’, in the sense that they convey information simultaneously
through different (even conflicting) modes and almost always suggest
more than they show. Diagrams are not drawings of things as they are
visually perceived, although they may include elements of this, but
rather they make present that which cannot be seen. They often repre -
sent objects in the world in a way that not only edits and translates
their visual attributes but also their non visual ones. In short, diagrams
promote understanding through thought, as well as sight. Or rather
diagrams indicate a particular operation between the eye and the mind,
one that makes account of, or imaginatively constructs ideals, be they
hypothetical or virtual, that run alongside, but never fully equate to,
their counterpart material form. Through a static visual ‘language’ they
propose movement and time. Diagrams can be mundane and often
glaringly (and even enjoyably) inadequate, but are also capable of
holding vast imaginative projections. I would hazard that these are the
capacities that have drawn Michael to them, deploying them as jumping
off points for his own diagrammatic extrapolations and embellishments.

Field Notes appear to take enormous pleasure in the possibilities and
contradictions that they present. They pose a puzzle: how can some -
thing so self-contained be so expansive? They are serious yet playful,
slight yet profound, formal yet narrative, matter of fact yet full of refer -
ence, they are put to work yet have nothing to do. In the mind’s eye
modernist sculptures, architectures, machines, wallpapers, furniture,
assemble and disassemble. But these drawings don’t only exist as
images. As I’ve suggested above, for the viewer they also act as a set
of instructions, processes, movements, rules and regulations. And it is
this aspect of these drawings that is overwhelming. Really, I’m tempted

Field Notes #$, 4545, ink & collage on paper, 46 x 64.7 cm