Unit Three Documentation Work in Progress
Documentation
Work in Progress
Work in Progress: Triplets, Probing the Mysteries of a Double Life, oil on stretched canvas, painted frame, 21 x 29.7 cm (A4, unframed) (each, 2 parts), 24 x 32.5 x 5.5 cm (framed) (each, 2 parts)
As specific themes within my practice have gained prominence, novel conceptualisations for new artworks have begun to surface, particularly those that delve into exploring ideas surrounding reflexivity and the temporal dimension. This mock-up of the diptych paintings I intend to paint was inspired in some measure by Giulio Paolini's Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto (1967), a picture of Lorenzo Lotto's Portrait of a Young Man (1505). The mere change in title (itself a subjective convention) inspires a variety of connotations, such as that the original creator was also the first spectator of the work and that the "young man" is both Paolini gazing at a Renaissance portrait and the object of the gaze of the portrayal. By incorporating his own presence in the piece in this way, Paolini plays with the roles of the subjective and objective in pictures and objects of speculation. However, Paolini's interconnectivity strategy helped to restore visibility, allowing the act of looking to be perceived by the spectator once more through a fusion of art and life. In this way, the observer assumes the role of the final author of the work. In similar efforts, I have employed my own image in the work and employed it as a means to allude to relations between the spectator and the work. The title Triplets is problematic since multiple twofold associations lead the spectator to search for the triad elsewhere, outside the picture plane.
Lorenzo Lotto, Young Man, 1505 (left), Giulio Paolini, Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto, 1967 (right)
Alighiero e Boetti, Probing the Mysteries of a Double Life, 1990, (for Parkett 24)
Alighiero e Boetti, Manifesto, 1967
In addition, I gave the work the title "Probing the Mysteries of a Double Life," after a work by Alighiero e Boetti. This is not least because I have been playing with titles, and since Boetti's central use of titles, exemplified through his semiotic works such as Manifesto, demonstrated the arbitrary nature of the connection between language and reality, which is central to structuralist philosophy. But also, because beginning with Ping Pong in 1966 and continuing through Twins in 1968, he doubled himself by inserting an "and" between his first and last names in recognition of his preoccupation with duplication. In his work Twins, Boetti crafted a public persona for himself by sending out a series of postcards with a surrealist image of himself holding hands with himself, not only himself as the double but also the original and the simulacrum. In Boetti's work, the constant exploration of uncharted territory and the adoption of non-traditional modes of cognition are fostered by the performative use of the double and the theatrical.
Alighiero e Boetti, Ping Pong, 1966
Alighiero e Boetti, Twins, 1968
I wanted to extend painting's framework that I have been investigating in the first unit as sculptural objects, enhancing the sense of continuity between the painting and the frame, conveying a sense of exploration and playfulness by investigating subjective experience through colour comparison and juxtaposition. Here, I activated perceptual faculties by adorning each frame with contrasting hues that mirror those of the garments depicted in the paintings, in addition to the playful use of titles and twinhood. In my Unit One feedback, I was asked about the importance of repetition throughout my online platform. Through my investigations of multiplicity, I realise that the continuous duplication of the image illustrates the ubiquity and sheer power of images in society. The contrast in the two frames draws attention to the spatial relationships on the canvas and the singularity in the pair.
Helen Marten, The Almost Horse, Third Moment Profile, Sadie Coles Gallery
Helen Marten's recent exhibition at Sadie Coles Gallery exemplified the distrust of images, with the exhibition accompanying a diptych title The Almost Horse, after the failed attempts to depict a horse creating an inaccessible subject, and the Third Moment Profile, after the tripartite example of hoarseness evident in the exhibition as well as being a more ambiguous metaphorical title that has its roots in the engineering terminology of the works. Throughout the exhibition, the horse is not realised in language, form, or image; rather, "the threat of linear time is suspended, confused, or even violated because the idea horse, almost arbitrary, is resistant to conventional capture and closure." This has become a springboard for my work, not only for the efforts to purposefully disrupt any illusory manifestation of the subject at hand to reveal the treachery of images but also for the playful and semantic use of double and triple signifiers. Much like Helen Marten, I decided to give the work two titles, Triplets and Probing the Mysteries of a Double Life, further heightening the semantic use of the double and opposition within the work. As well as the practical manifestations of the double: two paintings, two frames, two images; the work also alludes to multiple twofold associations: the simulacra and simulation, the original and the reproduction, etc., further breaking the idea of a fixed image, revealing the treachery of images.
“Tautology is always double... Yes, doubling is tautology too... I am I, he is he?”
The paintings should elicit an immediate reaction of opposition centred on a scepticism for representation, as evidenced by the work's double entendre with titles, "Triplets" and (with a nod to Alighiero e Boetti's use of doubling) "Probing the Mysteries of a Double Life." The title's suggestion of tripartite relations complicates the image's mimetic function by prompting the spectator to search for the triad elsewhere, beyond the realm of the picture plane, and insert themselves into the work. Although I am one of triplets, one of the figures depicted, and the artist, I have exploited these unique tripartite facets of the image to demonstrate that visual imagery never consists of a simple relationship between subject and object. Despite efforts to create two identical paintings, the comparison serves as a semantic shift between the original and the simulacrum, revealing that pictures are a representation of aesthetic subjectivity and a non-viable equivalent to the tangible world. Painting and linguistics become mediums for exploring objects of cultural production and the ways in which we negotiate the construction of a subjective self. The two paintings could essentially embody duplexity and opposition—comprising the subjective and the objective, the internal and the external, the real and the fictitious.
Ironically, when advancing my investigations of twinhood and the double, I came across Van Hanos’s exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, Twin, which featured a collection of brand-new paintings with an emphasis on experimental figuration. The artist actively sought to broaden our understanding of figurative painting and its history. This new body of work reveals Hanos's expanded conceptualisation of painting, which frees both his and our perception of allegory and imagery. The conception of the exhibition was conceived from a conversation between Hanos and his twin brother, sharing his preliminary vision of the duplexity: thinking of the trapezoid-like gallery spaces as a pair, as well as making Twin his second exhibition with the Lisson Gallery and an extension of his previous body of work. Focusing on the formation of one image from another, the concept of twin, as opposed to twins, prompts introspections on the self, contradictory to the plurality of the twin.
This facet of the exhibition aroused my interest because it further emphasises how a picture’s trajectory travels through embodied experience while its meaning shifts and adapts in response to cultural and societal factors over time. Thus, the work explores the enigmas of aesthetic practises and the appearance of implicit subjectivity. A good example would be his painting Twins (inspired by Sam Potthoff, 1979), depicting two sets of eyes in a black void. The pitch-black space alludes, both literally and figuratively, to an investigation of the painting's plane as a two-dimensional space in which three-dimensional effects can be created. According to the artist, these eyes represent babies in the womb, with the dark background suggesting a body. The large illustrative motifs of eyes (which could almost be drawn from popular culture and animation) allude to the sense of sight (or lack thereof) deployed in the womb, suggesting that this aims to address a dichotomy in the way we process and consume information by integrating distinct forms of sensory experience.
Andrew Grassie, Car Door 1, Car Door 2, 2020, Tempera on paper on board, 14,8 x 18,8 cm (image) (each, 2 parts), 31,1 x 35,2 x 3 cm (framed) (each, 2 parts)
During Andrew Grassie’s artist talk as part of the Postgraduate Lecture Programme, Andrew spoke of his practice of meticulous egg tempera paintings, spanning his time as a student to his most recent exhibition at Maureen Paley, Studio M. What most excited me about his presentation were the slides that included repeat paintings in twos and threes. Andrew demonstrated that with each work, there were slight differences but that there was something to be gained in the comparison; the repetition of these motifs prompted a close examination, asking the viewer to determine what lies between, thereby involving the viewer in the very process of constructing meaning and coherence from the resulting image. In addition to emphatically illustrating the minor differences, this multiplication serves to highlight the paintings' proclivity for representation and reproduction, which is semiotically charged by the simulacrum of the original. The work challenges notions of art's social function and autonomy by drawing on the artist's tendency to repeat his own works. The replication adds to the experience of the original image, a moment of cognitive self-reflection, and historical and representational self-awareness. It creates a space and time for contemplation of the paintings that is qualitatively distinct from when the original source photograph was taken, despite the fact that such an experience is haunted by the object's trace. At the end of the talk, I asked some questions regarding duplication and whether he sought to critique museums and the practice of art for their surplus aesthetic and economic value. Andrew explained that his work opens different layers of discourse and continues interest in the status of the images that many artists, such as Louise Lawler, have sought. However, he is very interested in this idea of time: the spatial and conceptual constructions in which his images are made.
References:
Joselit, David, OCTOBER 130, Fall 2009, pp. 125–134. October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2009.
Bal, M 2022, Image-Thinking : Artmaking As Cultural Analysis, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [18 September 2023].
Marks, L. U. (2002). Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press.
Sadie Coles HQ 'Helen Marten: Third Moment Profile - The Almost Horse,' Sadie Coles HQ, Available at: [https://www.sadiecoles.com/exhibitions/908-helen-marten-third-moment-profile-the-almost-horse/press_release_text/] (Accessed: 10 July 2023).