Framed Heads, First Masks
A drawn border, and inside it one head filling every corner. That is the formula of this room, and it is where the masks of the summer begin. Twenty-three works, two of them from the first winter and the rest from a single month, May 5 to June 3, 2022.
The borders vary: a wavy white and red ribbon, a row of blue stones, a strip of brown, a thin pink line. What they hold is always the same kind of thing, a face made of parts. Eyes are targets, spirals, X marks or lit squares. Teeth come in rows, as blocks, bones or a grille. Between the parts, the square is filled with scribble until nothing is empty.
Follow the X. It arrives on the first work in December 2021 as a cross on a wheel, returns in May on a gold skull, and by the end of the room it is sitting in both eyes of nearly every mask.
Two from the Winter
Before the mask month there were two framed faces, five months apart. Together they set out the border and the staring eye.
NNOTB #4
A wavy ribbon of white, red and blue runs around the edge, and inside it a machine of a face is packed with marks: a target eye with a black X across it, pink petals with yellow crosses, a blue wheel with a zigzag rim, and a long mouth of red lines at the bottom. It is the first framed head in the collection, drawn on December 9, 2021, and the X is already there, laid over the eye like a cancellation.
NNOTB #24
A red frame around a grey field, and a white face with two round staring eyes and a round open mouth, its hair a tangle of white strokes.
Skulls in Boxes
May 5 to 7, six works in three days. The border becomes a strip or a row of stones, and the faces turn to skulls, crowds and the first spiral eye.
NNOTB #67
Behind a border of blue stones on the left and a row of orange tiles below, a purple face with two ringed eyes bares a double row of white teeth.
NNOTB #68
A dense skull in white line over purple and black, teeth drawn as a row of yellow blocks.
NNOTB #69
A gold skull with two red X marks for eyes, a row of grey teeth, and white lines crawling over it like cracks. Around it the ground is black and the border cream, with green and blue stones scattered through both. This is the X at its plainest: two strokes crossed over each eye, drawn in red so that nothing else on the skull competes with them.
NNOTB #70
A head in profile facing right, with one square eye glowing yellow and a spiral inside it, white bars and yellow fence posts along the left and bottom.
NNOTB #71
A crowd packed into the frame: a skull with crossed eyes at the lower left, a row of small faces up the right edge, and figures with spiky hair across the top.
NNOTB #72
One eye a red X, the other a blue spiral, a bone of a nose between them, and a mouth of white blocks, all packed with purple, yellow and orange pattern.
Machines and Masks
Mid May. The heads turn mechanical, with dials, grilles and lettering, and then on May 25 four masks arrive in one day.
NNOTB #81
A machine face with a row of six round dials for teeth, each marked with an X, and a beam of light crossing it from the left.
NNOTB #87
Black and red scribble over a gold figure, the word BULLISH written twice in red, once at the top and once at the bottom.
NNOTB #102
A mask with one eye a red cross on a yellow target and the other a spiral in a box, a mouth of white teeth in a yellow frame, and a border of pink dots around the whole thing. Blue and magenta scribble fills every space between the parts. The cross is red and the X is gone, but it does the same job: it cancels the eye it sits on.
NNOTB #105
Two gold cylinders for eyes, each with a red slot, above a grille of white bars and a tangle of orange, black and white scribble.
NNOTB #107
A mask with a red heart for one eye and a smaller heart for the other, a row of yellow beads under them, and blue tubes across the forehead.
NNOTB #108
A mask of grey bone teeth, two eyes ringed with scalloped lace, one a planet with a ring and the other a square with a small face inside it, the letters W A G M I along the top.
X in Both Eyes
The last week of May and the first days of June. The X now sits in both eyes, the scribble gets looser, and the room ends with two heads drawn in a single morning.
NNOTB #110
A head wrapped in white line, its two eyes spirals, held inside a square of black and a border of pink scribbled with gold.
NNOTB #116
A yellow face with a red X in each boxed eye, a tube for a nose, and a fan of blue rays coming in from the lower right.
NNOTB #118
A big mask fills the frame to the edges: two eyes with X marks in red and blue boxes, a long mouth of white teeth in a red band, and a crown of red and orange spikes around the top. Pink zigzag runs along the cheeks and the chin. Where the skull of May 6 had a plain red X on gold, this mask puts the X inside a box, surrounds it with pattern, and makes it one part of many.
Compare with #69, in this room
NNOTB #120
A round white face with two yellow spiral eyes inside a dark halo, drawn in black scribble over teal.
NNOTB #123
A dark head with one blue spiral eye and one yellow, lit by a beam from the right, and lilac lines crackling around it like electricity.
NNOTB #124
A mask of yellow, black and blue with a red X in a round eye on the left and a square eye of zigzags on the right, a row of blue beads around the edge.
NNOTB #125
A yellow cross in one eye, a red cross in the other, a mouth of grey bars in a red frame, and scribble in blue, orange and white over a dark ground.
NNOTB #134
A face painted in black, brown and grey, with small pale eyes, a red mouth drawn in a snarl, and lines of red running down the cheeks. Colored scribble in lilac, blue and yellow floats over it without covering it, and there is no border. The mask has become a face again, with a nose, lids and lips, and the X has gone from the eyes. It is the one work in the room with shadow.
NNOTB #135
Twenty-four minutes later, the same morning, a face in loose line: one eye a red target under a spiky lid, the other a yellow oval, a red mouth with white teeth, inside a thin pink frame.
Compare with #134, in this roomClosing
Look again at the X. On the first work it is one stroke across one eye in a crowd of other marks. On the gold skull it is two plain red lines. By the last week of May it is drawn in both eyes, boxed, colored and surrounded by pattern. Then, on the painted face that ends the room, it is gone, and two small eyes look out instead.