This Paris-collected test sheet captures dense accumulation of anonymous mark-making where countless customers tested pens and markers, creating unintentional abstract composition. The layered strokes, color experiments, and gestural tests form what Sukan identifies as "alternative sites of public display"—banal commercial spaces transformed into accidental galleries of collective expression. Unlike traditional abstract art created by single authors, this work documents collaborative creation where participants never intended to contribute to artwork, producing what Sukan calls "original social documents" that bridge private notation and inadvertent public performance.
 
Sukan has set out to identify alternative sites of public display and common space within the banal recesses of the everyday world. Collecting and adopting the sketch pads and papers that customers use for testing markers, pens, and other drawing tools at art supply stores through the years, from different cities around the world, Sukan considers how these test sheets serve as a vehicle for both intimate and exhibitionist performance as well as original social documents. In the improvised layers of sketches, doodles, and drawings that fill the pages, Sukan sees the documents of a ritual that approximates the practices of graffiti art but makes no allowance for participation in a common culture. Unlike palimpsest or open-sourced editing platforms where history can be scraped clean and updated, the sketch pages collapse past and present straddling the line between private notation and public expression. His transformation of these sketch-filled pages suggests that while the artist offers another voice, it is one capable of giving form to that which litters the surface of the things.
 
Paris marker test abstraction captures collective creativity from art supply store—anonymous marks transformed into social document. Archival pigment print from Public on Paper series. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.