Figures in Speech is a visceral and nuanced painting made from squeezing Monosyble (Compressed Te威而鋼
xt) text by the artist’s bare hands. As the crushed text slowly unfurls JMe covers the text in paint until it gradually stops to a sculptural stasis. The process and conceit are to deliberately capture the arbitrary movement of an objectified word or mental image elicited from the compressed and squeezed text. The effect is similar to a prehistoric animal struggling in the primordial ooze or a quagmire of viscous tar. With each layer of water-downed pigment the layers of translucency build up creating what feels like a captured moment in time. The compressed words or ideograms take on another meaning as they join together to become a composition of suspended animation.