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of Judgement ( 2008 ) (purloined snippets of Immanuel Kant) and Like So

Manyof My Generation ( 2010 ) (emptied-out baby-boomer angst, like the

unpopular suggestion that “HELL MATTERS”). “Proudly Insincere” shone,

literally, with cynicism and despair.

While he would be unlikely to proclaim that the seemingly centrifugal

strands of his production—the photo-works, the word-works, the large

and small sculptures, the writings—together form some ultimate Gesamt-

kunstwerk, the filaments of his production have clearly developed in

parallel and often bend together in a process of cultural cross-propagation.

The artist’s numerous photo-works, for example, although born of an

insistent sense of pure visuality, tend, nevertheless, to be decidedly literary

as well (that is to say, they are subtly but insistently symbolic, metaphorical,

furtively diagnostic, allegorical and analogical). Given the fact that each

panel of each work is explorable in a way that is different from the other

panels, the photo-works are troublingly discontinuous in effect. The writings,

meanwhile, unlike the more gnomic photo pieces, tend to be rapid, free-fall

narratives, vividly imagistic thrillers, almost painterly in their effects,

relentless in their rush to resolution.

When Garnet’s third novel, Lost Between the Edges, was published in

2007 by Semiotext(e), I found the book both riveting and irritating in equal

measure (too much pawing the ground at the start, I felt, and too much

repetitive dialogue). When I read it again, however, I found it entirely

riveting. Had the book changed (unlikely)? Or had I (which is more to be

believed)? One tends always to be catching up to Garnet.

and his gallery-works —his ambitious photo-installations, and his wall-

mounted, water jet– cut stainless-steel word-works.

First, the word-works. Garnet simply calls them sculptures, and they

may well be a text-idea spun off from, first, the cut-out letters of Time: and

a Clock and, more centrally, portable extensions of his public sculpture

from 2003 to 2004 , a torqued tower of leaning, metal texts called Turning

(which offered time-related messages such as “MOMENT TO MOMENT TO

MOMENT” and “CONSUMED IN A FLASH”).

Words now turn up in his work as frequently as if he’d scribbled them

on Post-it notes and sent them to the fabricator. Consisting entirely of

provocative shards of linguistic fragments, truncated utterances, adages,

aphorisms, partial proclamations, semi-epigrams, frayed platitudes, near-

bromides, plundered quotations and half-poems, the word-works crystal-

lize Garnet’s simultaneous amusement at proffered truths and an almost

ribald distrust of them.

Meanwhile, cut-out words have informed one of the artist’s quite recent

public sculptures: his Artifacts of Memory ( 2015 ) is made up of five gigantic,

angled, up-thrusting lines of text, which offer comfortless ideas such as

“SLOWLY SURELY DISAPPEARING,” and “LUCKY ENOUGH TO FLY INTO

THE FLAME.” It all seems to be about endgames and inexorability.

Four suites of the word-works—the exhibition was titled “Proudly

Insincere”—were exhibited in 2 0 11 at Torch Gallery in Amsterdam: Money

Dreams (2007–08) (about artworld economics), 11:11 ( 2008 ) (sound bites

from TV news programs harvested at 11:11 a.m. and 11:11 p.m.), Critique

Eldon Garnet Categories

of Disappearance #8 2009

C-print 2 0.3 x 25.4 cm COURTESY

CHRISTOPHER CUTTS GALLERY

Eldon Garnet Categories

of Disappearance #6 2009

C-print 2 0.3 x 25.4 cm COURTESY

GALLERY POULSEN, COPENHAGEN

Garnet_ sp16_14TSLR.indd 86 02/04/16 1:53 PM