POSSIBLE PRIME KNOTS

I refuse to think that Cabinet is just a random collection of topics, it is true that there was no spelled out connection between articles or is their an obvious purpose for the articles they chose, but since when is the obvious interesting.

There are two things that struck me. First it seems that the articles in the first section were describing different forms of practice and were not just general content. The knot mathematician is someone focused on working and reworking relationships between a limited number of elements. It is the idea of the infinite that drives such a person to continue in such a seemingly numbing practice. But this is the same reason many painters paint. Richard Tuttle is constantly reworking and balancing only a handful of elements in his work, always looking for that next "new" combination. Tuttle's paintings are often dismissed as too simplistic or boring by those who encounter them for the first time, but often they become more interesting for those willing to give them their attention. The focus and devotion that exists in their making is visible in the paintings confident simplicity and unapologetic presentation. These same elements can be misunderstood by a viewer unwilling to look at the work on its terms but instead try to impose their ideas of what makes a painting "good".

Second is the idea of ruin. It is interesting to me that both Frieze and Cabinet decided to focus on ideas of failure and ruin in their inaugural 2006 issues. Is this because there is a new longing for ruin as a check on the explosive growth and homogenisation of the world? Or is it a comment on the state of the art world itself? While reading this magazine I found myself thinking of the art world as one massive and massively unstable structure. Top heavy with too many artists and biennials and lacking a strong foundation, yet continuing to be built upward driven by feverish market speculation and demand. Is this focus on ruin a prediction, is this structure going to come crashing down? And if so will the ruins it leaves be grand and beautiful like the ruins in Rome or will they be unyielding and blunt like the cement structures created by Germany during the second world war?

I could be that Cabinet is just a random collection of interesting articles. But what is interesting about reading it that way? There are many conclusions a reader can come to about the purpose of this magazine but none of them can be sure if they are correct in those conclusions. But isn't it better for us as readers to allow for the possibility of those connections, and isn't that allowance also needed in viewing and interpreting artwork?