Untitled New ArtWork
Does a title really matter? I use this experimental piece and the accompanying narrative to bring more explicitly art references and other influences into the story/composition.
This multilayered, multimedia work brings a Mondrian-like scaffolding to a textured ground that is part earth-scape, part colour fields, part wall & paper debris, a conflation of ‘scenes’ that perhaps suggests that “All is my own Dream.” Yet, I hesitate to title it such.
The piece also brings into the same frame themes I have been exploring through other series.
One is Improbable Landscapes, a series where I explore a multi-perspectival approach: using abstract landscape elements, bringing distance, place, and the subterranean into a unified composition.
Another is The Conversation, where I bring together reference to Mondrian’s geometric constructions to overlay a variegated display of colour fields referencing Rothko. While each of these artists had their own inquiry going on, their own metaphysic informing their productions, I bring their methods– geometry and colour fields- into play suggesting another metaphysic.
What do I mean by metaphysic? Either suggested by the praxis of the work, or through the artist’s manifesto, (or artist statement) there is an assumption (or even declaration) of the artist’s view of reality. Their way of ‘seeing things.’ Or, the way the artist wishes to challenge current views of reality.
I take my art-making to be a form of inquiry, an exploration of one’s own intentional dreaming. This is my own metaphysic. And by ‘dreaming’ I mean a creative activation of the imaginal. One can begin with a gesture, a felt-sense or concept: A jump-point initiating the production, but in the process an inquiry may ensue. Here, one is not proceeding to a defined end-point, a termination but rather the process opens to serendipity, to surprise and even astonishment. There may arise a deeper insight into the unspoken, the unnamed question that was guiding the flow all along.
In “Untitled a New ArtWork” the traces of those earlier series remains an influence. The inquiry continues but traverses a new territory, or effects a reterritorialization. So, by interweaving the painting aspects with words that are part descriptive and explanatory, part juxtaposition of the practical aesthetic and the metaphysic, another world manifests, to suggest, to configure, to inspire contemplation. Your own contemplation. Perhaps ignite a question you must now explore.
