Riot
Dots and dashes was all Sheridan could come up with to describe her paintings. The canvases were always self-importantly large and barely fit through doorways. It took her months to finish a single piece. They were her “spot collections,” cryptic, loosely pixilated images that remained perpetually on the brink of discovery. He could stare at one for hours in her Brooklyn loft, knowing the patterns of dots, lines, and squiggles resembled something, something familiar, that couldn’t quite reveal itself. Fist to his lip, he’d pace forward and backward, focusing and unfocusing his eyes as if he were studying stereograms in those Magic Eye books, until his pains outweighed their mystery. Ji Hae didn’t believe in solutions. She talked about “struggle” constantly. Dancing with him at Nickie’s, she would spout off names over the impossible noise—Sophie Tauber, Piet Mondrian, Roy Lichtenstein—and he’d be rapt just by her moving lips.
They began dating a week before Christmas. She liked his hands.
“It’s a political piece,” she told him, the first time he tried to buy one of her paintings. “The title, Sa-ee-gu, means four-two-nine.” It was a study of her Koreatown roots, of April 29, 1992, when 2,000 businesses were burned to the ground during the L.A. riots. It resembled a newspaper photo, hundreds of dots in different shades of gray and black, densest at bottom center. He looked expectantly for burning buildings or the outline of a body. Chaos in the streets. Los Angeles on fire, Koreans and blacks pointing fingers at each other through the flames, policemen with their nightsticks high in upswing, vandals smashing glass windows and livelihoods. It’s too damn neat, thought Sheridan, who liked it better before she’d captioned it. The dots were spaced equally apart in vertical lines, and the piece reminded him of the grids and pegs in Battleship!, his favorite childhood game. The lines were frank and eschewed meaning. They were militant and coldly stable. He wanted it for his living room.
Sa-ee-gu was not for sale, she said.
They began dating a week before Christmas. She liked his hands.
“It’s a political piece,” she told him, the first time he tried to buy one of her paintings. “The title, Sa-ee-gu, means four-two-nine.” It was a study of her Koreatown roots, of April 29, 1992, when 2,000 businesses were burned to the ground during the L.A. riots. It resembled a newspaper photo, hundreds of dots in different shades of gray and black, densest at bottom center. He looked expectantly for burning buildings or the outline of a body. Chaos in the streets. Los Angeles on fire, Koreans and blacks pointing fingers at each other through the flames, policemen with their nightsticks high in upswing, vandals smashing glass windows and livelihoods. It’s too damn neat, thought Sheridan, who liked it better before she’d captioned it. The dots were spaced equally apart in vertical lines, and the piece reminded him of the grids and pegs in Battleship!, his favorite childhood game. The lines were frank and eschewed meaning. They were militant and coldly stable. He wanted it for his living room.
Sa-ee-gu was not for sale, she said.
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