A Sorrow That Is Also a Kind of Joy

2026
Charcoal, glue, lacquer, organic pigment, paper, and spray paint mounted on paper
Varying dimensions

Works on paper exploring ideas of process, consumption, and decay. Similar to their predecessor, these works consist of stacks of ripped-up paper. In this iteration, however, the emphasis shifted—as the paper was repeatedly torn, folded, rolled, scraped, re-painted and pressed, the intention shifted from a conceptual to a process-driven one; from poetic to physical. Evoking natural cycles of growth and decay, erosion, weathering, aging—but with an implication not of termination, but transformation. “The ritual”, Carl Jung writes of funeral burials, “has a sorrow about it that is also a kind of joy”—an acknowledgement that decay not inherently implies loss, but rather a different kind of continuation. Like an aging body, the paper was pushed to its limits—accumulating scars and blemishes, resisting any notion of purity. The resulting topography does not generate information to be processed (by our already over-stimulated minds) but rather absorbed; consuming whatever it is given, rather than exist to be consumed.