Dennis Hollingsworth

Monadology

Back in '96, I started to paint using the nature of impasto paint as a prime driving motive force. It all happened in a moment when my palette knife lifted from a lump of paint on canvas. Immediately, a tendril formed. Marveling at the beautiful resolution of paint in tension... in space, away from the plane of illusion, I did it again and again until the surface of the hemisphere was expended. the result was a whole. It seemed elemental, the basis of a vocabulary of paint application that respected the corporeal nature of this particular variety of paint. I called it a monad, recalling what had initially attracted me then about the ideas of Leibniz, what little I knew and could comprehend at the time. Fortunately, everything I've learned about the ideas of Leibniz since then has confirmed the good fortune of identifying this approach to painting with the ideas from this unique philosopher.

Today, the YouTube algorithm has delivered this video to me. I'm quite delighted with the presentation. Succinct and to the point.

He described an aspect that surprised me, that I hadn't known before, the idea about the immateriality of monads, of the universe. Since I've invested a lot of credence to the reassertion of the materiality of media, in particular within the realm of impasto oil paint, I'm surprised by a possible connection to Conceptual Art, the idea that art can be -or is, as those pioneers would have it in the 60's and 70's- a set of instructions. As I've been informed by Leevark's presentation, the road back to the grounded reality of materiality would have to be mediated by the Supreme Monad.

That's Good News.