Riding home at night on my bicycle across the empty farmlands of Brandenburg I get a strong sense for what reality is really like. Surrounded by what seems an infinite expanse of darkness I travel onwards with only my headlight illuminating what is directly in front of me. Everything else is hidden. However, in the the periphery there are glimpses, hints of things that could be there. I try not to pay attention to these phantasms and instead concentrate on the task at hand. Which is staying up right and getting home safely. However, with my art practice its different. While in the studio working alone on my craft, I imagine myself in that great expanse and here I do not pay attention to what is directly in front of me. Instead I look to edges and I try to hold onto the brief glimpse just beyond perception. Here on the edges of what is perceivable I pursue my artistic vision.
Perception, perception, perception
Over the past couple of years I've become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of UFO's. I’ve come to think that something is happening that we can’t explain but is none the less actually happening. The problem of the phenomenon of UFO’s (now often called UAP’s - Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) ties in closely with my interest in perception. On the one hand our ability to perceive the world around us is truly miraculous, a wonder in and of itself. On the other hand it is clear that our ability to perceive reality as it really is, is hemmed in by our biology. In other words we are not seeing the whole picture and therefore a large part if not the majority of information concerning our existence is not available to us. So when people experience seeing or perceiving something that cannot be explained, what then is to be made of it? What do we do with this information? I don’t know, but one thing seems clear to me, and that is, reality is way more strange than we can imagine.
Intention and Meaning
I start with the idea that the meaning of an artwork is primarily unknown, even and especially to the artist. Any attempt by the artist to say what it means is only intention and intention almost never correlates to meaning. In order for the meaning of an art object to be known, the meaning must be continually constructed through a process in which the culture the artwork is embedded, engages with the artwork. Said in another way, after the artwork is created, the viewing of the artwork by a viewer (or rather many, many countless viewers) invents the meaning. So meaning of an artwork is both created and discovered in process that takes place through time, and furthermore this meaning is always in a state of becoming, never reaching a steady state. This also says that the meaning of an artwork is continually at risk of being erased and forgotten through time. In this case intention is completely obliterated but the process by which we find meaning can go on, and is continually constructed and reinvented.
The Mythic Past
Our perceptions shape our reality. Fabricated in the present with an eye to the past, our perception projects itself into the future. In the current political climate we see this phenomenom played out on a grand scale and in real time. Most glaring are the examples of Brexit in the UK; Donald Trump in the US; and here in Germany the rise of the AFD. At the bottom of all three cases lies a deep fear that the future will not be as good as the past. This may or may not be true, but more importantly, which past are we talking about? It is of course the mythic past, a past that never existed.
Hypothesis
Through tension created by the juxtaposition of objects, figures, garish pop color combinations, the viewer is unsettled, while at the same time seduced. The viewer moves in for a closer look. There is a strong sense of intention perceived in the artwork, however, this intention remains elusive. Taking advantage of the inborn need to create meaning, the artwork induces the viewer to take a guess.
The Whole Enchilada
We will never have all the information required to build a full picture of the world. We perceive three dimensional objects as two dimensional projections in our head. We always must lower the resolution of the outside reality in order to make sense of it. What we see of the world is a reconstruction in our heads which approximates the world outside our heads. We can never see an entire object all at once, there is always a part that is hidden. When we look at a building we only see the side that’s facing us. We can perhaps walk around it but we must hold in our memory the sides we’ve already seen and our memory can’t remember all the detail. Then there is the inside of the building, with it’s many rooms and floors, which contain numerous objects. This building and what it contains can never be entirely perceived. Never in our lives will we be able to experience an entire object as it is at any one moment. In the time it takes to walk around a building, enter its interior space and catalogue all the rooms, floors and corridors, the building has changed in some small and insignificant way, which means its not the same as when we started.
Void of Meaning
We are at a point in contemporary society where we all know at some level that meaning and purpose are created fictions. What we need to now guard against is cynicism that says there’s no point to anything, resulting in nihilism. Nietzsche once said of meaning and purpose, “that man would rather have the void as meaning, than be void of meaning”. In today’s contemporary societies, the void as meaning is exactly what we have. We must now pick ourselves up, be brave and dare to create the meaning and purpose of our lives, which we cannot bear to live without. When we understand that it has always been thus, we can move forward, integrating this idea into our understanding of how purpose and meaning are constructed. Moving forward we can then understand how at any moment new information will become available and require us to adjust not only our map but perhaps our destination as well. This is not a tragedy but rather a reason to rejoyce, it means we are now learning at such a rate that we are now having to constantly readjust our sense making apparatus. We shouldn’t panic, but rather see this development like a child constantly discovering the wonders of the world. Carl Sagan said our time is “by far the most exciting, satisfying and exhilarating time to be alive” as we “pass from ignorance to knowledge on these fundamental issues; the age where we begin in wonder and end in understanding.”
Über die Bedeutung der Kunst
Seit meiner Kindheit habe ich mir oft die Frage gestellt, “was ist die Bedeutung der Kunst?” Diese Frage ist sehr problematisch und störend, zumal ich ein Gottesleugner bin und an keinen inhärenten Lebenssinn glaube. Aber trotz meines Unglaubens glaube ich, dass es nötig ist, Lebenssinn zu finden und zu diesem Zweck ist die Kunst wesentlich. Vielleicht - besser gesagt - ist es so, dass Kunst einen Zweck aber keine Bedeutung hat und der Zweck, ist ironischerweise, Bedeutung vorzustellen oder herzustellen. Ein Art des Ouroboroses. Wir bauen oder schaffen Bedeutung, indem wir Kunst herstellen. Man könnte sagen, der Künstler isst, sodass er Kunst machen kann. Durch diesen Ansatz ist der Lebenssinn seines Lebens und im weiteren Sinne, der Gesellschaft, in der er wohnt, hergestellt. Aber das erfasst es nicht ganz, etwas fehlt. Nämlich, was ist die Wirkung der Kunst auf uns und wie funktioniert sie? Ich denke, sie hat etwas mit der Kommunikation von verschiedenen Bewusstseinszustände zu tun. Aber warum ist es wichtig, Bewusstseinszustände zu erzählen? Ich denke, dass es nicht nur wichtig ist, die Bewusstseinszustände des Künstlers mitzuteilen, sondern auch, dass diese außer der Zeit sind. Man kann vor einem Bild stehen oder durch ein Buch lesen, die 300 Jahre vorher gemacht wurden und durch die Wahrnehmung dieser Kunst den Bewusstseinszustand des Künstlers erkennen und damit eine Brücke zwischen unserer Zeit und ihrer Zeit bauen und dadurch die Zeit löschen.
Sense Making
Can the artist contribute to sense making? Can the artist help humanity as a whole make sense of the world we live in? I believe the answer is yes. In fact, for all of human history I believe this has been the central role of the artist. However, since lets say modernism, I believe that on the whole art has only contributed to the obfuscation of reality. In other words, art has only contributed to making the world more difficult to understand. Time and time again I’m told by the casual observer, “I don’t get art, it’s not for me”. How can it be that a purely visual form of communication that requires no literacy or deep cultural knowledge has become mute to those who are neither illiterate nor without an understanding of the culture they inhabit? We are currently living through an unprecedented time in human history. A time when we need all the help we can get to make sense of the current situation and one of the tools we’ve relied on for sense making since the dawn of human culture is broken. Art in this moment is doing all it can to make itself irrelevant.
Sense Making
This whole Corona virus situation has been strange. This goes without saying. But what’s stranger still and quite disconcerting is the amount of noise in the media coverage surrounding this pandemic and all its present and future consequences. And by noise I mean the nonsensical contradictory information that descends on us all like an avalanche. This avalanche of information pertains to data about not just what the virus is and does and what we as individuals can do about it but even things as simple and trite as what the name of the virus should be. With all this noise aka nonsense, how can anyone ever make any sense of what is going on? How can anyone make sense enough of the present situation to plan for the future? How can we ever be expected to make informed and effective decisions when the information about reality which we are given, bear no resemblance to the reality we are actually living?
What has all this to do with being an artist. What’s an artist to do? To do about it? What???
What will I write about in these blog posts?
At the behest of my wife I will be posting my thoughts into this blog, which I’ve aptly titled ‘‘What am I Thinking?’’. And when I say ‘‘aptly’’ I mean because what I’m thinking, according to some, could rightly be considered nonsense. In this blog I will not be writing directly about my artistic practice - and all the thoughts that may or may not be going through my head as I put paint to canvas - but rather about my thoughts on a range of topics, that I in that moment happen to be obsessing over. It should be said, however, that if I’m obsessing over something, at some point that something will find its way into my artistic output. So in a round about way, the words I write down in these posts can be related back to my visual artistic practice and maybe even at some point be used to inform how someone might interpret my artwork. These posts will function as guide to how I think, and what I’m thinking about. One could say this is risky, especially if one is so inclined to believe - as I do - that artwork is best viewed without prior knowledge of the artists intent. But I must remind myself and the reader, that I will not be discussing my artwork directly in any way, shape or form.
Berlin, 03.04.2020