VISUAL ARTS PORTAL
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| The exhibition "See as / See in" in Luxemburg [04.03.2010. 10:10] Filine Wagner, curator The exhibition "See as / See in" by Gustavs Filipsons and Martins Ignats in Konschthaus beim Engel, Luxembourg. | ||||||||||
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| Abstraction and Illusionism Abstractions relate to the human propensity to generalise views. Illusionism, in contrast, stands for the propensity and skill to perceive things as appearance, as mere imagination. What seems to be abstraction and what seems to be illusion depend on the object of abstraction or illusion. In particular abstraction is a multifaceted process: is it an abstraction from the concrete, individual into types, allegories and embodiments? Is it an abstraction from the representation of material things to an immaterialised depiction of structures? Or is it an abstraction from its depiction in a countermovement to idealism and the belief that everything can be represented, until only the bare material, the pure colour, the aesthetic self-reference is left? The judgment whether a certain representation is abstract and / or illusionist depends very much on the beholder. Due to the staged situation in which an artwork meets the beholder, it cannot always have the same identity. Thus, abstraction and illusionism are elements dependent on variables: At the encounter of time and beholder, every artwork is characterized by openness and ambivalence. Characteristic of an abstraction is the reduction or the absence. Through these aesthetics of absence, the limits of perception are able to be experienced. The expectation of the beholder to see an image is initially denied, and a dialogue between artwork and beholder initially appears impossible: images are there but then they are not. They call upon the beholder to trust his own resources and connect to images stored in the subconscious. The black or the dark, how it features in Gustavs Filipsons’ works, is characteristic of the absence. Despite the presence of light and independent of its colour saturation and intensity, the darkest of all colours has an immeasurable depth. This means that dramatic orchestration in painting can essentially be attributed to black. Expressive forces are linked to this colour. For instance, the vastness opening up in a black plane is indeterminable in its dimensions. Likewise, that what happens there in the dark is not palpable, and this irrational constitutes the suggestiveness of black. A means to counter this inconceivable dimension of black is limitation - the more formalised black is in its appearance is, the more is its expressive vocabulary kept in check. Kazimir Malewich’s Black Square of 1913 is of particular importance in this respect, because it concentrates the colour black to a geometrical form. Here, for the first time in modernism, nonrepresentation overcame the traditional illusionistic manner of representation. However, even if the colour black is strictly formalised, it will always have immeasurable qualities. The approach of bringing the indefinable qualities of black into a certain form was then further developed by the exponents of the American expressionism after Second World War. Within their overall work, such differently working painters as Clyfford Still, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella or Ad Reinhardt created "Black Paintings", forming an own genre of painting. Gustavs Filipsons reintroduces structure in his paintings, however not by following formalised standards. Only after the eye has adjusted to the dark of the surface, the beholder realises that at first sight dark surface in Filipsons’ paintings is composed of a differentiated structure of various chromaticities and lines. Different then plane abstractions, Filipsons again creates pictorial qualities. Malevich’s painting Black Square is concerned with the perception of nonrepresentation. Martins Ignats takes up this aspect and transposes it to colour. He thereby stands in the tradition of artists such as Rupprecht Geiger, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko and their colour painting, which crystallised since the fifties. Each in different manner, they realised the autonomy of colour. They did not only free colour from the parameters of the pictorial context, but trusted it to be effective in itself, without external stabilisation. Colour painters do not work with colour, but seek to set free the potential of colour quality. According to Worringer, two opposed tendencies form the starting point of the development of the abstract: On the one hand, the development in art to a plane, crystalline abstraction, and, on the other hand, the propensity emanating from naturalism to commit to the art of empathy. Through the obtained autonomy of colour, empathy and sensibility are rediscovered. Therewith, colour painting achieved its intention not to be an image of reality. Colour painting neither enunciates models of a true reality, nor does it attempt to formulate man’s existential orientation. Instead, it defines itself as different from other genres of art, such as the informal painting of the subjective expression or realism, which responds to occurrences in reality. Its concern is modest but as far-reaching as that of the other significant art movements. It calls attention to a loss, namely the disappearance of sensuous perception, and to the fact that colour has always been used as a value for intensity, but was never itself regarded as intensity. Theplane stretched colour in Martins Ignats’ paintings emphasises this sensuous aspect of colour, because it abstains from any static limitation. The haptic character of the often sculpturally worked colour material and the paintings’ calm gesture have supportive effect. In the dialogue with the beholder, spaces of colour are forming, which, despite the absence of representation, create fine illusions. Despite, or rather due to, their reserved and pleasant form of appearance, Gustavs Filipsons and Martins Ignats’ works demonstrate that the perception of the abstract is dependent on the individual beholder and exemplify the openness hidden by the abstract, which does not provide definite answers but creates room for seeing. Abstraction is neither nonrepresentational nor formal, but a visual expression of a permanently changing process. This process does not only encompass the artistic work, but also the permanently changing conditions to which the eye of the beholder will adapt. In See as / See in, Gustavs Filipsons and Martins Ignats’ works show a counterbalance to the modern world flood of images, allowing for a sensitive and intensive form of seeing. | ||||||||||
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