John O'Connor

My diagrammatic drawings visualize the looping, cascading processes through which physical experiences are felt by our bodies, given meaning by our minds, and then acted upon anew. These experiences are then mentally processed again and the cycle continues, eventually confusing the original sensation with its mental reconstruction. This confusion leads to aberrations, such as anxiety, humor, delusion, fear, and violence. My drawings articulate the patterns (visual, linguistic, abstract) that link these very human processes with the universal principles of chaos theory, which suggest the existence of forces beyond our comprehension, be they natural, political, social, psychological, or some multifarious conglomeration of them all.

The drawings included here, "r SIN 1 EATER" and "Tim (x) Jim," exemplify this. In "Tim (x) Jim," the snowballing escalation of violence shifts in a comically absurd way, from an innocuous gesture (a look) to an extreme act. Each character’s actions and reactions loop backwards in a way that alters the original gesture again and again. In "r SIN 1 EATER," the mirrored lines at the right and left deviate slightly upon comparison, like an off kilter, bi-symmetrical Quija board incantation. Is the sin eater committing a sin by eating a sin?

John O'Connor lives and works in the greater New York City area. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY. He will have a solo exhibition at Pierogi Gallery in the fall of 2023, accompanied by a catalog with an essay by Philip Glahn. O'Connor is also a member of the art and technology collective NonCoreProjector.