Case 014
the secret files of new york art detective
Walter Lin P.I.
Brick S.H.I.T. House
Life’s messy. That’s what the work was about, really. My college project—a sprawling wall of silkscreen prints—didn’t try to tidy anything up. About 100 frames, sprayed silver to blend in with the wall, were arranged in a pattern that resembled tiles—like the kind meant to evoke bricks without bearing their actual weight. Six metres across, two high. The arrangement had a surface neatness, but there was something unspoken underneath it, something heavier.
The prints were a mix: half black-and-white stills from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, half random color snapshots from my life. The stills focused on Brick holding a glass, Maggie clinging to him. Tighter and tighter, the crops closed in until there was almost nothing left: just the smudge of his thumb behind the glass. The captions followed the same kind of disintegration. What started as ‘I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to’ stripped down to ‘I don’t have to do anything’, then ‘I don’t have to’, before finally just ‘have to’. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on me—or at least, not now.
The title came from Paolozzi’s General Dynamic F.U.N., though there wasn’t much fun in my version. It was a mess, chaotic, but that’s where I was back then. I suppose the work reflected that without meaning to.
Blurred Edges
The college gave me a decent spot for the show—the central gallery. But there was this staircase cutting through it, open tread, breaking up the view. Typical, really. Life rarely gives you a clean frame. I tried to document the piece, shot a roll of film. Every photo came out blurry. It didn’t even surprise me. That kind of thing just seemed to happen around my work—edges out of focus, details slipping away.
I’d printed eight editions of the series. Kept them around for a while, dragging them from place to place. Eventually binned them all during a stint in France, save for one full set I gave to a mate of mine. He’s a conceptual artist, and sometimes I wonder if he still has them, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d ask. Better to leave it as an open question.
Still Talking to the Wall
Looking at it now, I can see how much of me was in that work. It wasn’t just about memories or photographs. It was more like putting a conversation on a wall—a fragmented, uncomfortable one. And maybe that’s why the themes—self-reflection, messiness, honesty—still run through everything I make. I’m still having that same conversation, just from a different place.
The staircase, the blurry photos, the captions breaking down—it all still feels relevant. Maybe life doesn’t give you clarity because there’s nothing clear to be had. Just fragments. Just a mess you try to hold together long enough to make sense of it. And sometimes, maybe that’s enough.
