As artists we all begin to construct with what is given…
(edited from Constructions, Master of Visual Arts Research
Paper 2001)
In Constructions, I have discussed a number of issues that
are germane to my practice. Making installation or site-specific
works that are neither painting nor sculpture, my interests
range from the purely 'pictorial', such as form and colour, to more
'spatial', such as space, spatial relations and architecture.
It is, however, the concept of construction, and the ways artists
attempt to deal with these issues, that most fascinates me. US conceptual
artist Joseph Kosuth recently said that 'as artists we all begin
to construct with what is given'.1
For me, this means that the artistic process is not really about
new inventions or discoveries, but about new modes of construction,
the processes of rearrangement, recombinations, de/re/constructions
and formations. It is not the elements that change - they remain
the same. But the rules we apply are different each time. And the
outcome is different each time, too.
The ultimate outcome of the process of construction is form.
The issue is how can we conceptualise form that no longer operates
within the restricted limits of reductive abstraction that no longer
is valued for its autonomy, its independence from matter or content?
Perhaps the answer lies in the operative mode, the active form
that does not merely mean or represent - not the form that is, but
the form that does. It is form that enters a process of form-ation,
establishing links outside the purely pictorial boundaries, venturing
into different dimensions. Form that enters the domain of 'spatial'.
Spatiality, in this context of form-ation, is not just a
question of added dimension, but a conceptual enfolding of spaces.
Such spaces can be real or virtual. They can encompass social ideals,
cultural exchanges, perceptual experiences and conceptual motivations.
They conjure through different media - painting, sculpture, installation
and architecture.
In this process of formation, the operative form exists in the
space of multiple relations of succession, in constructions that
are a layering of spaces within themselves, spaces enfolded in others.
It is a form that is dynamic, temporary, multiple and complex.
In such a formulation, the artistic process, the process of construction,
is not a translation of a concept or an idea into the visual. It
becomes a self-generating system of conceptual exchange. A process
of mutation and circulation between concepts and ideas that are
perhaps not always clearly defined. As Wittgenstein reminds us in
the Blue and Brown Books, 'we are clearly unable to circumscribe
the concepts we use: not because we don't know their real definition,
but because there is no real definition'.2
Abstract art, or art in general, does not signpost destinations,
but offers - in the most speculative way - ideas about how we might
consider the future.
1. Joseph Kosuth's statement from 1998
is in Jörg Schellmann (ed.), Wall Works: Site-Specific Wall
Installations, Munich, New York: Edition Shellmann, 1999, p.110
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown
Books, New York: Harper and Row, 1976, p.25
|
