Helen Marten

Mud Physics: Theoretical Writings

Approximation, models, collage and inlay; dust, vectors, animals, snow, blood, and diagrams. Compiled in this volume for the first time, the selected writings of artist Helen Marten probe the critical spaces between image and language, material subject and conceptual idea. Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, writing, and video, her work compels a peculiar engagement with language – its wounding or wailing power, its sly metamorphosis, its seduction. Mud Physics explores this submerged side of materiality where dark intent lies, questioning the linguistic framework of theoretical doubt as the place where mistakes are embraced to become generative. Exploring theories of the mercantile and the digital, her writing examines craft as syntax and touch as a rejection of heteronormativity; instead, pleasure in material promiscuity is felt as a "fundamental itch."