Luke Harnden’s work is on view in Critical Mass at the SP/N Gallery, through November 11, 2017.

In the past you had referred to “algorithmic painting,” and many of your works had numeric titles, such as K120g or K30.72. However, Bay has a different kind of title, and it also appears that there are more layers of different kinds of imagery visible, as compared to those earlier paintings. Is this part of a new series of works?

Bay is in the same body of paintings that include the algorithmic pieces but it does mark a shift. The initial titles were generated by inputting the dimensions of the piece and the CMYK color combination into a simple formula. Similarly, the image is the result of a set of directives that when carried out using recursive gestures, generate complex visual fields. It is a way to encode materials without the use digital equipment. They’re like cyborgs, a synthesis of the hand and mechanical procedure, making the invisible into the tactile. Bay is a response to this process. The newer pieces still physicalize coded information, but the image is a photograph that’s rendered through software and turned into a vinyl stencil, further degrading the image. This sets up a dialectic embedded within the work: an exercise in remediation pushing against a strictly hand-made algorithmic procedure.

Along with reference to the idea of an algorithm, your show at the Box Company referred to borborygmi: a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines. These two concepts both refer to ways of making forms mechanically or automatically, that is, separate from conscious intention. Is that sense of an automatically or mechanically generated form accurate?

The material itself, in this case acrylic paint, canvas and wood, is cumbersome and slippery, failing demands of efficiency and interchangeability. It’s a way of introducing indeterminacy into a system of fixed absolutes.

It is. Intuition is like a set of directives that lies outside of conscious thought similar to automation, but one of the things that make these two kinds of automatic processes distinct is the degree to which determinacy plays a role. There is a situatedness in the realm of digital coding and mass production. The thing becomes fractured into bits of information that recur according to the constraints of the system, The material itself, in this case acrylic paint, canvas and wood, is cumbersome and slippery, failing demands of efficiency and interchangeability. It’s a way of introducing indeterminacy into a system of fixed absolutes.

Looking at Bay: if I step back a few yards from the painting, so that the close-up repeated horizontal patterns are less apparent, I start to see more of an image that covers the whole surface, which looks semi-abstract to me. I see a little bit of text and maybe part of a face, but overall it’s hard to make out completely clearly; it looks maybe like a scene underwater, or a dream, or a scrambled TV broadcast image. Is that kind of “semi-abstract” interpretation on the right track?

The algorithmic paintings are purely abstract but the photographic pieces are more a degraded or corrupted image. In the way that you might squint or hold a photo away from your face to see it more clearly, the pieces respond to the body’s movement through space. From across the room the images come into focus representationally. As one moves closer to the work, the low resolution reveals the underlying architecture to the structure of the image.  

Looking at several of your works together, and trying to describe some of what they have in common, I would point to: First, there is the kind of repeated but also slightly irregular or “glitchy” screen pattern which is done in a single color. That is often black or gray, but in Bay, it looks like a chinook or sea green, which makes me think of old-school computer displays. Second, there is another color that stretches across most of the canvas and predominates. In Bay, that is largely brown, but there is also a strong presence of falu red, especially across across the middle or “waist level” of the painting. Third, there are sometimes highlights of a different color; in Bay, yellow at the center right and lower right. My question is: how do you think about color, and choose the color palette for a particular work?

Color is a kind of wild card for these works. Sometimes they fit conceptually into the pieces such as “Fluids” which draw on ideas about the four humors. Other times there is a more intuitive approach. Often times when I have decided to use a certain palette I will only mix a portion of the paint needed. I then mix paint as the piece progresses in a loose way to vary the pigments in unexpectedly.  The materials have a high level of incidence, much of the irregularity of the lines or glitchy-ness is a result of the painting and transfer process as well, similar to the way that footage or images develop artifacts as they are interpreted by various software and dispersed over multiple platforms.

You recently moved from Dallas to California. I have a theory that Dallas is much more like L.A. than is usually discussed (the freeways, the conspicuous consumption…) But my question is: What are your artistic impressions of California, now that you are there, and/or if you have a different perspective on Dallas, having moved away?

[Texas and California] are definitely both firmly rooted in car and consumer culture. They also have this pioneer legacy that mythologize rugged individualism and autonomy. Both of these places have a kind of boomtown history in relation to their various resources specifically gold and oil; however, they’re sort of like bizarro reflections of each other.

I have a similar theory about Texas and California. They are definitely both firmly rooted in car and consumer culture. They also have this pioneer legacy that mythologize rugged individualism and autonomy. Both of these places have a kind of boomtown history in relation to their various resources specifically gold and oil; however, they’re sort of like bizarro reflections of each other. It is always really exciting to move to a new place. I miss Dallas though, Texas is where some of the most important people in my life still live. It’s never easy to separate yourself from the environment that helped create you, but ultimately it seems like it was an important step for me at the time. The activity in Dallas is tighter and more concentrated, at times it can seem pretty isolating. Experiencing Los Angeles is in a way reaffirming.