GRID WORKS 1994 - 2002

MacLaurin Gallery, Ayr, Scotland
Nikolai Fine Art, New York
Washington Square East Galleries, NYU


Grid Works are a series of 20 large image juxtapositions made during a number of project collaborations with friends in ActUp and with hospitals in Milan and New York.

"Grids and systems. T-cell counts. Numbers. Categories. Spinal grids, cross sections, tissues, membranes, lesions and incisions - images and fears not contained by words. To classify and to label is to set out the cornerstones of medical research and scientific investigation. Acronyms and systematisation reflect the clinical means of ordering the chaos of disease. They distance the fear and engineer our responses.

In the studio, etherised upon a table, are the operating instruments and props. Spotlights focus on a desultory mix: a shiny scalpel, some rusty nails, nuts and bolts, inks and dyes, powered saffron and turmeric, blood-stained swabs, reds and yellows - the colours of bruises and bloody wounds. Black, red, green and yellow tints recall older histories of disease organised into the four humours or biles.

Grimes fashions other images with more muted, subtler colours - seductive cosmetic tones - laid out as in a retail display, metal X's and O's, the noughts and crosses of idle times, leaving the trace of an X, the basic signature, X marks pre-literacy, or a surgical incision, or a chromosome, a gender, a social identity."

Reproduced from 'Karl Grimes: Work in Process'. Stephanie McBride. Circa, No 81.

Grid Works include the following:
Blood Memorial (1995-1997)
Indicator Tests, XOX, Candy Code Grid, Corpus Series 1-4
Flap Anatomy Series