SARA SIZER

Nov. 23, 2013 - Dec. 29, 2013

Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, Austria

"Distracting Surface" Curated by Antonio Catelani

Olafur Eliasson, Matt Mullican, Giulio Paolini, Riccardo Previdi, Karin Sander, Sara Sizer, Sophie Tottie
http://kuenstlerhaus-bregenz.at/index12.htm

Antonio Catelani

- Distracting Surface -

An Analogical Idea

Prior to any illusionistic invention in paint, Painting appeared as a fragment of reality. It did so by creating an affinity between the constituent elements of distinct objects, in such a way as to draw out a high degree of resemblance between art and reality itself. This is true of mediaeval art, as well as the Russian and European avant-garde in the early twentieth century, waning to zero in certain paintings from the 1960s. Quite apart from any mimetic intent, a certain formula of art has an equivalent in abstract thought and a parallel in reality. The primary relationship that lies at the heart of this approach to reality is not so much, and not only, in what is represented by the use of signs. It is more in the structuring of a visual grammar and in the principles and constituent elements of painting and, particularly, in drawing as its prime mover. By consisting of sufficient elements, drawing contains the limit through which it is possible to perceive the limitless, inhabiting confines that are as psychic as they are physical. The image that emerges from within does not consist merely of lines, nor does it end simply in an aesthetic look. Background and sign are two distinct elements that belong to each other and yet do not blend together, even though the borderline between the nature of the two is subject to constant redefinition and shifts of what can be called an ontological frontier. The radical objectification brought about by Monochrome Painting elevates the background, the painting surface, to an image in its own right, giving it the status of a self-signifying reality. A synthetic, intermediate reality is achieved by means of a metonymical process. Here, content and container are renamed, cross-referring to and standing one for the other. All matter, including that of painting, has a scope that cannot be altered and, if not suppressed, its disposition for becoming image will emerge, always and in any case. A conception of an unconditionally materialistic plane paradoxically has the effect of raising and spiritualising matter to the point that it becomes an absolutely metaphysical vision.

The Distinct Sign

Even though with a limited sample of artists and works, the aim of the exhibition is to focus on the presence and current relevance, in the contemporary practice of art, of the ideational and procreative impetus of drawing as the conceptual driving force behind works of art. Even though at first sight they cannot always be referred to simply as drawings, in their inner fabric and structure they nevertheless bear the unequivocal signs of this discipline as a model of two-dimensionality. The aim is not to focus attention on a particular artistic technique or medium but rather to identify its particular characteristics in artistic contexts that are different and varied but always comparable in terms of tension and function. Attention thus goes to those works and artists whose practice contains the embryo of drawing as an exercise, be it event or accident, project or programme, and as enunciation through images. To the point where it appears that they intend to attribute to drawing irrefutable value and a supremacy that is theoretical before it is formal, even though it is itself the antecedent of form. The context to which the analysis of the constituent elements of the painting refers and the formal and contextual legacy propounded can be inferred from the shifts impressed upon the image. This fathoms out the plane, the receptacle of appearance and alchemist’s crucible from which the visible is generated. Every force applied to the surface makes it possible to reveal and elevate the surface itself from a state of indistinct neutrality to a clarification of its intrinsic, sensitive condition, which is at once physical and metaphysical.

Past – Present

In different ages and circumstances, diverse cultures have formed and adopted different models and formulas for the representation and conception of space, assigning a particular value to the image and to its production. A general conception, which dominates over others, has always proved to be limited in terms of time and suitable only for particular purposes, without touching on others. This means that this dominance has each time needed to give way, showing how an unequivocal, stable and lasting vision in time and history is impossible. The case of central projection as a categorical model is the clearest example of this. The temporary nature of styles shows how art cannot be a constant form, just as an evolutionary conception of it, and the overcoming of certain positions to the detriment of others, is mistaken. Every advance in art is more like climbing up the steps of a staircase: one is always on the horizontal plane of the tread, in parallel, with a certain base on which to rest and from which to proceed, since the riser of the step is not practicable, even though it is real. With its implicit rules, constant returns and digressions, art is in this sense like the force of gravity we are subject to.

In the early twentieth century Cubism showed us how it is possible to have simultaneous visions of a number of different planes belonging to the same object. It achieved this through a perspective deconstruction that appears as arbitrary as it is effective, and yet this was not entirely new. The “Byzantine” painting of Russian icons, which was rediscovered throughout the West in that same period, as we can see in the Russian and European avant-gardes, was ruled by the laws of a reversed or intuitive perspective. This art form had already entered the representation of objects and buildings with a simultaneity of vision that, in the most extreme cases, literally twists the object portrayed, showing its front, side, top and even back, all at the same time, practically turning the painted image outside of the plane and into that of the viewer.

The quest for a representation of a space other  than the one that had had been standardised and sanctioned by logical and pre-logical visions opened up a third way of huge potential. What Cubist artists introduced in their papiers collés – through fragments of newspapers or wallpapers and little objects taken from the real world and stuck onto the surface of the painting – redesigned the status of the work, which was transformed from a representation of reality to reality itself. The use of text that acquires aesthetic value, in the form of a newspaper cutting, is a visual demonstration of this. Drawing directly on reality became current practice and led to a shift of meaning, a reversal that distracts the eye, questions the mind and opens up to action as much as to a concise kinaesthetic form of understanding. Distraction, the diversion brought about by the “incongruous” element, instantly shifts our thoughts and attention from the perceived to the conceived. The mind does not remain attached to what it sees in the represented object, and this is neither sufficient for it, nor does it appease it. It does however take it up one step to a parallel plane of metaphysical comprehension. The newspaper cutting aims solely for the self-evidence of the thing itself, on a par with the signs produced by each artist. In other words, it acts in a relationship of analogy with these signs. The newspaper cutting is thus a catalyst for the rest of the image, for through it everything can be likened to truth. Conversely, the image traced out by the artist gives the status of image to the newspaper cutting. It affords the possibility of further addressing the image, distracting it from what it was or what it has become over the centuries. So, as soon as we look away, it will appear in another guise or, to put it better, it will offer the eye another intricate fold of this garment. The crux of the issue is possibly here: a parallel analogical process takes the place of a convergent, representative, logical-perspective process.

If we take a close look at Lucio Fontana’s papers with a series of little rips at the centre, in an oval drawn in pencil, we immediately sense the event, the accident that produced them: a point was caught on the roughness of the plane. In this case, the roughness is purely metaphysical, but its effect was to drag with it a little triangular portion of the sheet, which turned over onto the front side (in Italian this is commonly referred to as un sette – literally “a seven” – because the shape of the rip resembles the shape of the number seven: like a tear in a pair of trousers caused by a fall, which many of us will certainly remember from our childhood). Even if only partially, both the back and the front of the sheet will be visible at the same time. This simultaneity appears to question the laws of physics and open up to a conception of a space made of parallel realities that coexist with minimal gaps between them. What occurs at the centre of the sheet is, in this case, similar to a collision or fall that breaks the integrity of the plane.

At the edges, where there is less tension, the effect is gentler. Here, the curve can show the back of the sheet which, through the fold, can stop the instant of this disclosure. And thus we find an “ear”, which is also triangular, and thus also shaped like a seven. This is the equivalent, in a book, to indicating where reading has been interrupted or that something special appears on this particular page: something that in any case corresponds to an interruption in the sequence of reading. Having this little fold simultaneously show both sides of the page helps mark the pause and the equivalence between the before and after, in the identity of the sheets that form the book and in the difference in the text it contains.

The deliberately made fold on the two-dimensional surface of the plane shows that the bottom, as a real body, can be acted upon by the artist in a similar way to what happens as a result of the graphic sign that “engraves” it: in this case by enveloping and wrapping it upon itself, thus eliminating its two-dimensional limitations. It is possibly like this that we should interpret Fontana’s intention to open up to a spatial dimension behind the picture. This can also be inferred from the holes and cuts that, by breaking through the physical-mechanical tension of the plane, produce a slight, harmonic folding of the surface – in this case, of the “lips” of the cut – towards the back of the canvas. In other words, in the opposite direction to the rips on the sheet.

As we all know, behind the picture there is nothing other than the back of the picture, which can itself become image, as Giulio Paolini has shown. There is nothing other than the picture, almost as though it were a substantial compound of image on one side, and a physical body on the other. The perspective drawn by the taut skin of the canvas, like the cut itself, in no way penetrates that reality: it is only an artifice, a specially created illusion... a deliberate artistic deception, one might say. All is played out through absence and subtraction, by means of drawing, which is the emblem of the immaterial in its essence as a faint outline. As a voluntary act, drawing can even go so far as to disappear, vanishing in favour of an other action that reshapes the surface in its place. If the surface is acted upon by chance or accident, or even by forces intentionally applied by the artist, it produces a “drawing” all the same, but in this case it is acheiropoietic. This almost magic self-production of the image entails a renunciation, if not just a limitation, of the creative role of the artist, who steps to one side and simply prepares for the aesthetic experiment to happen. A perfect example of this process of giving up control and handing over to chance can be seen in Marcel Duchamp’s “three standard stoppages” (3 stoppages étalon, 1913). Three one-metre units of length are obtained by a random event and then locked into their form as established units of length. Art is not science and the aesthetic dimension that governs it has no possibility, or at least need, for actual verification, which is out of its jurisdiction: the rips as much as the darnings are thus “measures” of the unmeasurable and they open up to different horizons of understanding and knowledge.