Aug. 17/18 cusp of midnight 2026:
good nap today and cleaned this afternoon.
Dream during the nap was very crazy and hard to write down. There was a place with mist, my friend Julia and I put up somewhere, or on the run, or in cahoots with other friends, but our host, who's place was partly full of water (always some water) was also being rude and manipulative and we could tell their insecurities were like demons ruining his life, but we were becoming victims of it. And trapped. We debated the situation. Working theory was that he was attracted to one of us but couldn't voice it, and fearing rejection, became mean--OK-- I woke up thinking. My ego at work, asleep, and world-building evidently.
We had to trudge through a pond in the living room of butter walls.

on another note
upcoming calendar:


"Four Seasons" reading series at DDDD hosted by me.
First time, summer edition(!) and excited to host & hang out (at DDDD again).
here's the ad:
"Four Seasons reading series at DDDD is a platform for poetry in its myriad forms by artists in theirs. The performers are made up of those interdisciplinary writers whose practices transgress disciplines/mediums, and may be known for one thing more than another. At Four Seasons, they are invited to express that other thing."

July 1 or 2 : 2026::

Ear Inn reading with Mike and Funto and Harry Davies made this flyer which I love.




...... last week put in full days in the studio-- THE STUDIO NOW, split down the middle, half-way between KIKO and I, meaning, double the space each (and dbl the expense!!)-- Painting the text on a new painting-- FINISHED. finally.
now I can "revise" through paints.
I have a lot of work to do still and honestly, I don't feel like being disciplined. It's been hard to focus. Summer energy: I basically just want to play footy + bike to the beach + hang out.
but, I have a lot of paintings to develop.
Recently, the way to sketch has been to write sonnets for the new piece and then paint them. It has been fun, funny, and sketchy. more poems as a result, more painting more fastly------ though painting text is slow and painful.

Jun 16 : 2026 ::

Knicks won the NBA finals and the world cup kicked off. Nothing gonna get done for weeks.

5.22.::2026 ...........

My dream(s) last night were all over the place........
...........,.
I was traveling, physically, but also psychologically visually zooming over parts of the world like a drone, observing landscapes & cityscapes, & as they were coming into focus, like Herzog's camera observing Kuwait from above the surface of the charred gulf water, & all the green lights & flashes of gunfire, beaming over & across like orange ribbons dragging on the air. I was traveling to Switzerland.... or Sweden.... on a long layover between airports, my guide(?) & I had to take a boat across a body of arctic water. The boat only needed to go a short way to the land (which would lead to Zurich... or Malmö (???)) but we were still provided these odd sleeping positions to rest in during the ride. They told me my pack-style hiking pack was a unique style actually called a "yevin," & that I would have to go below deck with it. Down there,the passengers were all sleeping along these wooden slats that went up the inner walls of the boat like massive human-sized magazine racks or something. The deckhands left out some blankets & matts to unroll into the racks & ppl were lining up, head-to-feet. Some passengers got naked. We set sail.

The trip was quick across the icy water but during it I was fed a foam-like sourdough meal, of which I ate a huge portion of and even in sleep could really taste the sourness............
.....
then I was in my mind's eye, visualizing Mikel Arteta's house in London, but it was dry like Dubai, until I started to recognize some of the buildings & started to wonder if it was actually New York. Then the building was the one that I thought it was: The Empire State Building, and behind it, Central Park (sort of). Who did I find on the top of the Empire State? Adam! Adam and his nephew taking selfies.

We arrived in Zurich (i guess) and I remember ascending an escalator in a modern-looking terminal.

The night before, my dreams were also very vivid and conversational. Main thing: in this dream world I had forgotten, then re-remembered that I had had a kid accidentally with one of our neighbors on the floor (!!) and then remembered too that part of my role as a parent was to only speak spanish to the kid, who was already fluent, and we had full-blown conversations in Spanish in the dream. Then neighbor and I were getting along pretty well, though we weren't together, and I couldn't remember how/when we had had sex in the first place and a sneaking suspicion crept in that the kid was born from immaculate conception (that I was still culpable for, somehow) and therefore, neighbor-mother was a saint. A divine entity. I couldn't even remember if we had ever been together in any capacity at all actually, but I began to think that we were pretty good parents.

march 26 : 2026 :: just before midnight, in bed :

....have noticed during these weeks of regular work at PS1 how my mental energy and thoughtfulness shifts throughout the day and it is a very consistent schedule. Here is the schedule:

wake up 6:30 — break through initial grog to subtle lucidity. Calm but energizing thoughts that keep building as I stretch, then eat + coffee up until 8/8:20ish when I leave for PS1. Both biking and subway provide rushes of mental attention + spontaneity + runs of charging, clear, ambitious thoughts that rage through the commute, through til about 10:30 am (first union break!) and after which begins to mellow-out before lunch at 12:30.

then, my thoughts almost totally quiet down and my attention to anything goes out the window.............
.............. Post-lunch my mind & body both (all) quiet down and I seem to empty out. naturally, this would be siesta time (if I was in Spain!) & Physically, my body feels less vigorous/willing between the hours of 1:30 & 3:30ish (that is, second union break!). My thoughts are almost wiped clean and what bubbles up is purely superficial, unattached, inconsistent and lusty.

The following hours are a toss-up but generally I have an energy rebound going into the end of the work day and then it depends on where I go next. If I go straight home, my mind relaxes— everything relaxes; my body fatigued— and I find myself in a state of distraction/ aimlessness for hours possibly. Cooking dinner will likely be the only productive thing I do during this time. I'll go on instagram.com, pick up a book (and not read it), watch soccer highlights on youtube.com; talk to Xin. Typically I won't have an attention/motivation rebound until 10pmish, which is tough because I need to be going to sleep around 11:30ish to wake up at 6:30— but that last hour of the night can be good.

If, however, I go straight to the studio right from PS1, then I have a higher chance of keeping the day going, the momentum going, and apply myself to something in the studio. I can slot my body back into a working mode and go with the flow of painting. maybe.

sun, Feb. 14 :: 2026 :: [bout to be monday, feb. 15 : 2026]
Was 3 days-ish working on new poems for Eva, partly adapting from thread of poems had developed and then pulled from for the poem I wrote for Basie's new collection. That poem is called "Door to painterly." For Eva's reading, held yesterday in Nicola Vassell gallery with Eva, me, Penny Arcade, Ilka Scobie, and Moinque Erickson, I read 2 of Basie's poems on his behalf since he couldn't be there. Then I read these, regardless of finished or not finished: they were fresh:

Jan, 19 :: 2026 (!) a monday :

My dear friend, the poet Stace Brandt, curated a group show titled Objects of Devotion at Distillery Gallery in Boston with 2 works of mine included. It opened Nov. 21 and ran into the new year.
The other artists in the show are Babisa Adumbre, Jon Doucette, Jamieson Edson, Lydia Kern, Gaby Schaab, and Virgilijs Tilks.
Thereafter, Stace put together a show catalogue with install shots and a written contribution from the artists. Here's me:


(w/ sculpture by Virgilijs Tilks in foreground)

From the catalogue:
[ The two pieces included in "Objects of Devotion" are both working with writing material as an image source in the form of collage. By foregrounding my text materials, painting takes on this adjacent role which I began to think of as a process of shrining, or housing. What's in the house? Poetry, mostly. Everything might be in the house but all the materials are auxiliary to (and already within) poetry. The act of painting might be more shrine-like or more housing-like, depending on the work, though I think both are possible at once. In a way, they work towards a mutual dissolution into each other: the whole thing becomes a poem/the whole poems becomes a painting. These works in particular, made about 1 year apart from each other, express this ambition for discategorization, though as different stages. Paint itself is leveraged to evoke a setting and draft the collage imagery forward. Notes on the way to becoming poems are pasted onto paint, carried by it, but also trapped by it.

There's no way the painting, as a representation of bricks or a style of abstract clean-up, can be separated from the context. I think New York City is where the poems are actually living. This is the biggest house, literally. I channel it (?). Handwriting moves across subway-tile walls which have been ripped up and reveal old silicone caulking along the masonry. There's my poem jittering on the 5 to a job that morning. The paintings are representational in this way. Even the shrine (if it is one,) or the house (if it is one,) is assembled with "bricks." Text adorns every sightline; city-living is the POV, inevitably. Poeming into the painting becomes, overall, a way to turn text into building material. ]

Tuesday, Oct. 28 :: 2025 : noon

I had a dry cough (mild) yesterday and slept like shit. I had vivid dreams though. Night before too— but last night was also captivating, or magnetic, and focusing, as if I was really seeing what I was seeing in the dream. I was straining my eyes, but was asleep. Sort of.

I was hired at a local café/bistro on an island in the Mediterranean. It was largely french speaking but I think I was aware of a larger Italian or Maltese context, or perhaps, not Italian but specifically Roman empire Roman, or smthing. The café was old, wood, and dark. inside, though homey and still attractive, The other servers were very experienced and knew I would only be there temporarily but they didn't care— they needed help. Was it NYE?? In french I explained that I hadn't worked in food service in a very long time. They didn't care. I simply mimicked what I saw the other busboys doing. Tourists were talkative and consistent. Outside the café was a stoney khaki island rock with marble boulders staggered up the hillside, halved columns and wooden scaffolding around the façade of some other stone monument. It was a tourist spot and i was just passing through but I had more time on the island. For some reason I had this feeling Jeanne worked there and got me in. Was I staying with her somewhere?

At one point during a lull, I stood by the doorway, or the open window, and watched a procession of figures step out of the ruins and file past us in a procession. They were huge and I still can't decide if they were more animal than human. They were each adorned like gladiators clad in ornate armors with weapons and masks that were blurred— like, physically blurred— and therefore confused, or extended, or glitched the limits of their bodies. A gorilla-man followed by a tall snaking soldier, followed by harmonizing cohort of pointy slugs, and caboosed by a sort of centaur, but huge, and the horse portion essentially, globular with muscle. Body builders. As they passed by me, though they filled in the panorama with their massive, hulking forms, I could make out little wedges of sky behind them which was visible, curving around their shoulders, and in the distance, a veiny sky cropped through a portico of yellowy marble. Jagged white clouds were moving through the dark gray and purpley air; but their sky, which was so shaded dark blue, was not an obstruction of sun, nor was it night. The sky emitted the light of a blue day with zigzaggy white clouds like a chain of bats. The gray was also shifting— it was becoming almost pink. I was aware of more gladiators in my peripherals filing past the café onto the sandy streets— and I was so enthralled by the sky. It was so real, yet unbelievable, I thought I could understand more clearly than ever the spell of representation; of copy. or bootleg. The deep dedication to nature and wanting to picture it, exactly as that and I determined that if I stayed on this island— which is to say Italy, or Malta, or Corsica, etc. I would happily become a landscape painter. Nothing else.

Oct. 13 : 2025 -- 9:45pm

Tonight frustrated—— too drunk all weekend and now can't think—— work at PS1 past few days also drained me and I can't think...
......
............................as I go back and re-avow—
the improved sense of what works / what worked has gotta show. In a way, it feels like THE DECLINE IN READING, the whole show, was a roadmap with every piece behaving like a template that requires (or suggests) further sequencing. SEQUENCE as opposed to SERIES. Why does "sequence" sound better to me? Because of the "plug-in" implication? Modus + constraint sitting on a graph being budged against a factor. A factory.

..... Oct. 7 :: 2025 ....
show closing this weekend. Got the poets on board (!) to close it out <3

Thursday, sept. 25. 2025 ::

ESTÁ LA NOCHE entonces, escucho la música del Atahualpa Yupanqui. Calma.
Calm.
Xin on the couch knitting & watching a series w/ headphones in— oh, now she's moving around. We both been waking up early recently; me cause of MOMA PS1 days. it's nearly time to get in bed and read.

I think time away from the studio is good... I need stretcher bars anyway & gesso & materials in general. I feel relaxed, then again, I'm not sure this distance is also reflective. I feel good about the show so I feel good about the show. If I think about it, I feel aware of some of the threads I need to pick up and carry forward. It's a good thing I guess that I also don't know how to handle the 2 pieces up on the wall of my studio now. Calling that a good thing...

I still see the work in my head to come. The successly thing is that these pieces actually DO dissolve that conceptual division between text & image—— it's clear, especially hearing from how people read them. "Read." My head though is in this Bolaño class & in spanish. so here estoy-- hola.

Sept. 12, 2025 :: bout to be 13th.
friday (just before midnight)

Xin's asleep-- we had a date tn & it was nice! this italian joint in Bed Stuy. We didn't spend too much, about $125 incl. tip.

Turns out, the opening day would be eventful for several reasons, not least of all Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Outside the after party at Asia Roma, between shifts at karaoke, somebody pulled out the video -- YIKES -- and
once we broke the seal, it kept coming up. Well... the night was memorable.

Wednesday Sept. 10, 2025:
my first solo show in NYC opens today. I feel excited and grateful. excited to knock a few back with friends on this wednesday night! and be in love with art. And again, be with people.

March 26 :: wednesday :
Hopscotch Translation published my essay :

On Translation, Codification, and Something in Between: Language in the Paintings of Martin Wong

Honestly, it's a dream come true to contribute to the legacy of Martin Wong. Mi amor <3

La Ciudad de México - 2 - 10 de febrero

día 6:
La mañana pase en El Salado con Chel, Ada, Omar y un Italiano que se llama Vaso— en la tarde y noche, el opening de mi show: "Ariadne's Maze" en la Cantina Covadonga. Al fin, estoy exponiendo 4 obras: dos chiquitos cuadritos de Singapor y dos viejos abstractos de 2022. Fiesta, buena onda, mezcal y chelas con Lara, Juri, Virgil, Katya, Lucía hasta la madrugada.

día 7: crudo.
gran desayuno en mercado el Chorrito con Ada.
:
"Ariadne's Maze" se llama:

Off-site group exhibition during CDMX’s art fairs week
Location: Cantina Covadonga, CDMX (@cantinacovadonga)
Dates: February 5–9, 2025
Opening: February 5, 2025 | 6 PM

Presented by:
• N/A/S/L (CDMX) @nameagesexlocation)
• Erratum (Berlin) @erratum_gallery)
• Rudimento (Quito) @rudimento_)

“Once we rejected the infinity of the spirit, it seems improbable to substitute it with a theology of production or desire.
[...]
Today we are living not in a society of similarity, but rather in a society of difference. And the society of difference is not a politeia but a market economy. If I live in a society in which everyone is specialized, and has his or her specific cultural identity, then I offer to others what I have and can do— and receive from them what they have or can do. These networks of exchange also function as networks of communication, as a rhizome. Freedom of communication is only a special case for the free market.”
-- Under the gaze of theory, Boris Groys

My works in the show :









In a way, this show allowed me to showcase the turn in my practice from the abstract works that, in some cases, were edging toward asemic gestural painting to the current, text-focused collage works like these 2. I was so happy to show them in juxtaposition with my two larger works on the columns in the space. The red painting, "La Vida," and the dark purple/black painting, "Tilghman's Commas."

Delayed news : from back in October 2024 ::

Recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant for 2024.
more info on their ig announcement.

Had sent them a portfolio of the recent "blueprint" paintings, my collages from Singapore, and older abstract work.

"Blueprint 4: Self-portrait as Homescape" was among the recently finished paintings I submitted in the portfolio for the grant application:



Acrylic, mixed-meida (including my poem "The Building," notebook pages, energy bill, rent statement, calligraphy paper, and sketch of Palmer Hayden's "Nous Quatre à Paris" from 1930,) and oil on wood panel. 30 x 40 inches. 2024.

PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS

https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2024/07/tight-corners-at-d-d-d-d.html
by Mackenzie Kirkpatrick

&
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/show-curated-by-jan-dickey/6509
by Max Vélez

:

"
june 21, 2024
marking the occasion/diary entry:
My poem "The Building" included in a group show at D.D.D.D. gallery called The Corner Show, curated by Jan Dickey.

i love how it holds space as a framed object.

voilà !:


"

"
(April 12, 2024)

Hello hello,

after 2 months in Singapore I can say couple things in Chinese: "you stinky"(nî chòu chòu) "how much?"(duö shâo) and "Oh no, that's not my tea"(Aï yà! zhe bü shì wô de chá!). I made these small collages out of my chinese writing practice notes, my "Roaring Spring" pink notepad paper, and random other materials like hong bao envelope, receipts from Taiwan, and different rice papers.










Came back to these 2 paintings in the studio, both of which I finished back in February right before we left for Singapore, both of which I felt unsure about at the time.


"

"
November 13, 2023 ~ 7:39 am ~ kitchen

Now that I have my paintings back from Vermont I'm engaged again: I can work again. Have several paintings I have/want to make before we go to Singapore in Feb (!!) Likewise, I have/want to sell some work badly for the money. The money debt-building phase of my practice is the fun phase and now I'm in the debt-paying phase which means taking any/all jobs. That phase. Will have a studio day again this friday and some weekend time too.

Paintings to make before Singapore: 2 or 3 for mom's place (over the couch for sure, mb a tall skinny one for the hallway, mb some little ones for her bedroom). 1 large-ish painting over our bed for Xin and I (thinking something that has the energy of a tiger's skin! ;) ). And then i have in mind 3 or 4 paintings that pick up the flow from the "Nature is digital" pieces that I made for Vermont.

The thing now keeping me from paint-time is poetry and applying to poetry things, grad schools. Having met recently with an old advisor from Undergrad, the artist Mildred Beltré, she urged me to apply for more things, more grants, for whatever to get support and eyes on my work. Coincidentally, Day also sent me a link to the Hopper prize so I applied to that, submitted 10 paintings, mostly all totally recent. I feel morose whenever I apply for a grant. Here is my submission to the Hopper prize: Hopper prize paintings .

Yesterday, walking through Chinatown with a poet named DeShawn, who lives in Newark, doing the Rutgers MFA in poetry there, really nice person to talk to. Saw the Omari Douglin/Lukas Quietsch show at Ramiken again. Then in the evening, spoke to Mailiis briefly about how to update my website and she asked if this painting i made in August would go up on it so here it is:


"

"

October 4, 2023 ~ 10:35 am ~ in the studio

When the painting is effective it manages to evoke by the most abstract means some feelable (mb identifiable?) subject or mood. This piece I made with a friend in mind really evokes a city playground– it does.

“WOODSHEDDING     NEW YORK CITY”     Re-reading a page from Jack’s studio log : This entry on November 20 1974 says: “Group show at MoMA & Marden the only thing worth viewing…” So—— my man was also looking at my man! I had wondered somewhat about that, almost insecurely, if Jack was interested in what Brice was doing & vice versa, if they respected each other’s work. Jack also re-iterates something here that he’ll repeat later on in his studio journals: “Only keep your best work. Destroy the rest. It has a way of haunting you.” & I think I still stand by a gut-rejection of this sentiment. On the contrary, i think some modicum of “bad” work in your life—to remain in your field of vision— is perhaps a positive… or atleast humbling force. The sub-par works do their thing. They also serve as reminders for correction. Jack viewed his paintings with an objective standard of pass/fail based on whether the work succeeded in executing his formula, exacting it as mapped out and predetermined (by his steps.) I am interested in Jack’s concepts and aspects of his formulae but I myself am not interested in exactitude or precision almost ever. Moreover, I am still interested in the mechanics and potential of the human hand + brush (or tool). Painting: the image unfolds like a poem does: begins with a kernel of vision or impulse as point of departure, takes on blessures of movement, accident and then must react, be spontaneous, leading to some quality of surprise and dislocation: I am interested in “surprise” and “dislocation” because then i have allowed the work to form regardless of my intents, which means something autonomous and separate from me: something has asserted force: come through. Spirit. It’s possible that we share this element of valuing the unexpected, but i feel aware of the fact that Jack’s order of operations (at least for my favorite works of his: ie. the DNA paintings, the Greek Alphabet group & drag paintings) rely on establishing a formulaic foundation that, like a dormant chemical cocktail, is then activated by his compliment of machinery and guidance (but almost never his hand in the traditional sense) and thereby finished in one (often) instantaneous development that results in the painting. The variable that he introduces into the ground may make for more or less predictable outcomes, but Jack’s entire process pretty much IS a machination of spirit, an objective spirit, amidst the dissolution of brushstrokes & human judgment.

This is where poetry comes in for me. This is also where other influences come in, such as traditional chinese paintings, which place emphasis on the brushstroke itself, its isolated movement followed by constructive influence within the overall composition of the piece, whatever the image may be.

In 1975 he says “Living + working in N.Y. is getting harder + harder, Very difficult to continue without selling art.” We also say this all the time! It’s hard. I’m not even having it hard compared to most ppl. Even compared to our neighbors. But now I am in the red & owe my credit cards so… I have to make money this fall somehow to pay some off and be able to just be with Xin in Singapore and asia beyond, february + March. Right now it’s hard to conceive of 2 months away with no work but I am excited anyway— I am not old yet— fuck it. Go now, pay later! It’s what this country likes us to do anyway, making ourselves trapped in debt.

I am considering another studio sale this fall. Somehow I doubt that I will sell anything from the show in Vermont.

Ah–– & now several pages later, Jack writes TO Brice: “Yes Brice I saw your olive leaf— a real symbol. Just as real as your blocks of color.” Yes Jack yes Brice, Brice who just died. You both my

"

[ Front & back flyer for my show in Vermont 👻 ! ]