Using my car as a vehicle, a journey in search of complication.

I started by removing the plastic ornaments and vinyl graphics from past projects. I then used an electric sander to remove the paint, particle by dusty particle.

I reduced each piece of the body to bare steel then applied "Hot Rod Gray" primer. I worked progressively in sections until the car was completely gray.

After the final coat of primer dried, I re-mounted the "Limited Edition" tag, signed the car, and drove it 500 miles to Smyrna, Tennessee, to the Nissan factory where it was built. (Sentras are now built in Mexico; the Smyrna plant's main focus is trucks and SUVs.) I toured the facility; it was amazing. Watching the giant machines at the Nissan factory build smaller machines left me breathless. Part ecstatic Disneyland surrealism, part mechanical brutality, part windowless blue-collar banality, it was a site of all-encompassing totality. If I had to give space aliens a one-hour tour of Earth, I'd take them on the Nissan plant tour.

I left the factory and purchased new hubcaps at a nearby Wal-Mart. I installed them in a salvage yard just outside of town and then drove home. In the 33-hour round trip, approximately 20 were spent in the car.

Limited Explanation

A car is a tool, a device that saves time and work for its owner. With a finite number of days to accomplish whatever it is we're trying to accomplish, things like automobiles allow us to move toward these goals most efficiently. Working on a car can be a poetic return of the favor, however superfluous it becomes beyond a certain level of function.

Between the sanding, the painting, and the journey itself, I was searching for some kind of extreme neutrality, a convergence of negation and production. I set out to accomplish a monumental task without a discernible productive purpose. How can something so meaningless become so important? It was my goal to incite a dialogue between the two sides of my earlier point: on one hand, acceptance of the futility of accomplishing goals at all; on the other, achieving a most satisfying result. I believe the car looks beautiful.

A Brief History

Cars were an integral component of my youth - I grew up in suburban California. I developed an early obsession with monster trucks and hot rods. I spent years trying to convince my dad to paint flames on his modest gray 1990 Toyota Camry. In my teenage years, when this enthusiasm for light, heat, and noise eventually faded, cars remained a primary source of entertainment: my friends and I were classic automobile-wielding mischievous adolescents.

My mom sold me her maroon Nissan sedan for $1000 in 2003. She had owned it since it was new, and it was the first manual transmission I ever successfully navigated around my neighborhood. It was my second year of college and the car had about 115000 miles on it at the time.

I finished school (where I ended up using the car as a canvas more than once) and eventually moved to Los Angeles where I spent 7 short months, not once using public transit. In July 2009 I packed the car with my favorite things and moved to Chicago.

The car made the 3000-mile journey problem-free and with stunning gas mileage to boot, which was a miracle to anyone casually familiar with the vehicle. (At fifteen years old, it looked its age.)

After arriving in Chicago and feeling particularly confounded regarding my future as an art-maker ("We're all gonna die! Why even bother?"), I considered goals and accomplishments. To simplify my thought process: Life is pointless, so what should I do until I die?

What's documented here is the first answer that came to mind that made any sense.