Kill Shot

Kill Shot was created by repeatedly spinning and throwing three pens across the canvas. What first appears to be pure chance slowly began to form patterns. After hours of repetition, lines become denser, movements repeat themselves, and structures emerge. With every repetition, it becomes easier to lose sight of the individual. In war, people often disappear behind categories such as enemy, collateral damage, or casualty. Later, I added blood- and flesh-like traces, then partially washed them away again. The physical reality of violence appears and disappears behind abstraction, much like it does in the way wars are often framed in media and political discourse. I am concerned by how repetition changes perception. How and when individual deaths become statistics. And how many repetitions it takes before a pattern seems more important than the lives from which it emerged. Individual deaths become patterns. Patterns become statistics. Statistics become familiarity. Familiarity becomes abstraction.