Griffin Allman

My artistic practice directly addresses ideas of index, catalogue, and collection within various different contexts. Rooted in themes of habit, ritual, and hyperfixation, my work serves as both a regimented and psychological archive - one that seeks to understand how anxiety, fear, obsession, and the compulsive urge to categorize shape our perception of the world and of ourselves. Through repetition, gesture and the integration of text, I build visual systems that become exercises in focus and containment, where mark-making becomes a ritualized act of reclaiming presence.

Ultimately, I am interested in how the visual language of abstraction can serve as a conduit for emotional and psychological inquiry. I see each work as an artifact of a specific state of being; an index of a moment where the act of making transcends aesthetic pursuit and becomes an existential exercise. My research continues to evolve as I investigate how image, text, repetition, and materiality can be deployed in new ways to communicate the fragile, obsessive, and deeply human need to connect - to ourselves, to others, and to the act of making itself.

Catalogue of Words

Foundation, skeletal, amalgamation, contain, control, organize, gain, lose, erase, hide, overthrow, reveal, trace, fill-in, every-other, intimate, relationship, mind-body, grid, structure, armature, wrist, closeness, trust/distrust, memorialize, archive, catalogue, pay tribute, cease, rejuvenate, replenishable, question, discomfort, anxiety, system, parameters, rules, investigate, discover, to feel whole.

Titles

As of recent, my work is numerically titled in succession, for example 2025 - 1, 2025 - 2, etc. As much as I enjoy writing and drawing connections between the work and its conceptual origin, I simply view the physical and psychological gestures and actions within the work as an extension of myself, and therefore am not too interested in over-prescribing context besides what is visually present on the surface. I seek to title the works numerically as to highlight the work’s role as extensions of self, a rotary of physical experience that measures my own growth and the passage of time.

Documentation/ Process / Records

I try to be very organized and immediately label and categorize work as it is finished. This involves either scanning / photographing / digitally storing the completed work. I do not take many process photos (unless the work is generally large in scale), as I envision the existence of the work as proof of life / a process in itself. I try to be very intentional in the way that I approach making, specifically not allowing the “goal” to be “completion,” and instead allowing the act of making as a habit that functions in tandem with my everyday disposition and experiences. The work, the act of working and the act of cataloging are simply extensions of self, and I strive to eliminate the need for a “prep phase” - the under-drawing, the grid, the preparation of a surface and its composition are all elements that establish a final vision and should be endorsed as an active and integral part of the work. Because of this, I actually am not sketching or using my sketchbook often, and if I do, sketchbook pages are eventually ripped and implemented into the work. I am a collector of found paper / flat surfaces, and do continually utilize play and discovery both in and outside the studio to replenish the work’s ability to pose more questions than answers. In short, I am incredibly interested in immediacy, and how eliminating the preciousness and methodical nature of the prep-phase allows a more direct and passionate connection to be produced between myself and the work.