Latent S.

Latent S. explores sensory overload and social anxiety in contemporary figurative drawing, capturing the overwhelming saturation of stimuli in crowded environments—parties, cafés, urban spaces where perception fractures under cognitive overload. This work examines themes central to process-based art and psychological abstraction: how the mind processes excess information when attention fails.

Through obsessive pen and ink drawing on paper, the piece visualizes neurodivergent experience and social overwhelm using intricate, horror vacui mark-making. Dense, interlocking biomorphic forms mirror fragmented consciousness—individual stimuli (conversations, movement, ambient noise) dissolving into suffocating pattern work. The composition reflects art brut aesthetics and intuitive drawing methodologies, where automatic mark-making becomes both coping mechanism and documentation of psychological states.

The doodle-inspired visual language references outsider art traditions and meditative drawing practices, evoking Jean Dubuffet's art brut, Yayoi Kusama's obsessive repetition, and contemporary artists exploring mental health through line-based abstraction. The relentless accumulation of gestural marks suggests trance drawing and stream-of-consciousness techniques, situating the work within experimental drawing practices and contemporary mark-making discourse.

Latent S addresses timely themes in contemporary art: alienation in hyper-social environments, neurodiversity representation, and the limits of sensory processing in overstimulating late-capitalist spaces. The work invites institutional critique of social performance expectations and the hidden psychological cost of constant connectivity.

Part of the ongoing Latent Space series examining pre-cognitive states through drawing-as-research methodology.

Technical details:

• Medium: Pen on paper
• Dimensions: 146mm x 210mm
• Year: 2024
• Original work