Without Square — Defining the Architecture of My Work

After nine pieces and nine reflections, something has become clear to me.

What I have been making is not a series of images.
It is a system.

I have been circling one idea again and again—sometimes quietly, sometimes forcefully, sometimes intuitively—but always with the same underlying condition:

Without Square.

This is not a style.
It is not an effect.
It is the architecture of how my work exists.

What “Without Square” Means

The square is the default container of images. It tells us where a work begins and where it must end. It feels neutral, but it is not. It imposes order before meaning. It decides space before the image has earned it.

In my work, that geometry is removed.

Without Square means the form is not governed by a frame.
It is governed by presence.

The image is not placed into space.
It must justify its existence within it.

Black is not background.
Black is structure.

It is the void that defines what is allowed to remain.

Two Forces Within the Same System

Everything you’ve seen in the last nine pieces operates under this same condition—but with different emotional physics.

In Chasing the Setting Sound (Float), the form emerges.
The energy is continuous.
The edges are quiet.
The image does not challenge the space—it inhabits it.

The void remains dominant.
The form exists by permission.

In Rockstar 7: Bam!, the relationship shifts.

Here, the energy is compressed.
Color does not drift—it strikes.
The form presses outward, testing how much presence it can claim without breaking the discipline of black.

This is no longer emergence.
This is impact.

Yet both pieces obey the same rule:
The black is not decorative.
The square is not in control.
The form must earn its place.

Different forces.
Same architecture.

Why This Is Not Abstraction for Its Own Sake

My work is always anchored to something real: a guitar, a musician, a gesture, a moment of sound. I do not erase the object—I distill it. What remains is not representation, but energy, motion, and structure.

This is what I call referential abstraction.

The image does not illustrate the object.
It reveals what the object is doing in space.

Without Square is how that revelation is made possible.

What This Changes Going Forward

I am no longer experimenting with this language.

I am working inside it.

Every piece now asks the same question:

Does this form deserve to exist within the void?
If it does not, it is removed.
If it does, it remains—uncontained by edges, unsupported by decoration, defined only by presence.

This is not about making louder images.
It is about constructing visual objects that can survive silence.

The Work Is No Longer About the Frame

The square is gone.
The background is no longer passive.
The image is no longer protected by geometry.

What remains is the work itself—
and the black that allows it to speak.

This is not a phase.
It is the structure of what I am building.

Without Square.