Fig. 2 Bruce Nauman,*Musical Chairs*, 1983. The Herbert Foundation, Gent, Artwork: © 2021 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
A similar mode of production can be drawn from the materials I choose to use. [1]

A lot of this year has been about considering context of my work, almost too much. To refer again to last year’s final feedback, it is an advancement to identify what the works does. Another change in my process. Something that expands the action of the produced works, is the works ability to identify the criticality of these actions. These actions could be, quietness, strength, resilience or foregrounding. I don’t think this is something you can build into the work deliberately. I can lead the work to a point, Ie: use concrete to convey solidity, but it’s the wood grain of the carcass that amplifies texture. This textural element my take the work away from the form. Therefore, the choice of materials lends to the outcome, but does not overwhelm the content or context. What do I mean by that? Well by having concrete impregnated with the pattern of a grain of wood, does not make the work about nature, but may very well depict essential features of environment. In this context the Concrete Lampshade 2022 does not necessarily become geographic in context, but can be seen as a way of probing location, and the implications of placement and access.

Bruce Nauman in an interview with Art in America Journal, talks about how ideas are embodied in the making process which for Nauman, “seemed very simple to make because it wasn’t coming from looking at sculpture or painting.” [2] I feel an identification in what my work does in the sense that, at this stage, the work is still probing genres, and the ideas develop in response to and not because of the material. So, the materiality of the work retains a scope to articulate an existential expression over technical ability. This produces oblique stratagems that convey existence and continue my questioning along the same lines that Serra, Whiteread or Salcedo may stray into, like existence, community and memory. To take a further quote from Nauman that justifies my methods and inquiries, “ you do see other artists asking the same kinds of questions and responding with some kind of integrity.” Moving away from painting - a long time now - and ceramics for a while, frees me up to explore, what I see, as my most potent form of attack, when confronting the utilization of materials. As my work continues to explore the withdrawn and latent aspects of objects, the questioning of the meaning of being, for me, is best offered as an inquiry rather than an answer.

I can define at this point what my process involves. And that is a reliance on imputed data to say what the work is. The only way to escape getting bogged down in the metaphysics of theory and critical engagement is to make the work. Then, to quote Jacques Rancière, we get the result of making act as a critical device. Which then, politicizes the whole affair. For now the work becomes part of a production, and in a wider network of institutional review relies on context as well as content. Therefore the context is political and the content material. I’ve spent most of this L6 year stating that my work is about the ‘withdrawn’ a Heideggerian framework of accessing objects and what objects can hold in reserve when becoming a thing. Yet, I now feel it’s time to get making and doing, get lost in putting things together with bits. Only then can we continue the conversation of what the ‘withdrawn’ actually is. This Deleuzian approach of getting to one place to then explore what can be accessed from that plane provides what Rosi Braidotti describes as a place to “speak from somewhere {…] Be grounded. Be accountable for a specific location.” [4]

So, what is crucial about my Major Project, can only be answered within the beholding of what we can identify in the final work - and here is the change in my realizations about what the interactivity with my degree is producing, - This evaluation for me is what I now refer to as ‘Metaforming’. Metaforming is a theoretical proposition of two constructs. Both go to framing how the now, which we come into direct contact with, informs the future through its ability to carry over that we cannot come into direct contact with during a material construction. Meta, in this context, stands for that which exists behind and ‘Forming’, the coming together of constituent self-referential parts that distinguish themselves from the object in our view. The self referentiality is a way for the object to escape literal definition. A way to produce this evasive tactic is to use light. By submerging a light bulb in concrete, the light can only access affect through thought and suggestion. This elusive quality stands in for essence, something acting in ‘the spirit of’ and ‘by way of’. We are then given a secluded metaphor for existence as conscience. ‘Sense’ is given back to us by that which has been taken away. The approach here is through Heidegger’s broken hammer. Until we come into conflict with the removal of light - an actual electromotive force - we are presented with what Graham Harman identifies as a tension. In the consideration of the removal, the light symbolizes and becomes Kant’s Noumena. The sculpture transcends what is given as material, and the light source becomes an interdependent attribute of being through representation. The absent relies on our belief in its existence. French Philosopher and novelist, Tristan Garcia, defines representation '“through a law of exchange, which is the very definition of representation, the absenting of something present entails the presentation of something absent.” [5] Thus the absence now relies on our coming into contact with removal. Removing becomes the verb form of what the work enacts.

Click and hover the cursor over on the image for further description.

Fig. 3 The fitting of the light to the carcass.

Fig. 4 Testing of the light inside the carcass before pouring the concrete mix.

[1] Bruce Nauman, ‘Musical Chair’, Philips Auction Catalogue, (June 2021) <https://www.phillips.com/detail/bruce-nauman/NY010321/40> [accessed 23/03/2022]

[2] Joan Simon, ‘Breaking the Silence: An Interview with Bruce Nauman’, Art in America (1988) <https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/breaking-silence-interview-bruce-nauman-63570/> [accessed 22/03/2022] (Q. 3)

[3] Ibid, Q. 5

[4] Rosi Braidotti, ‘Post-Human Knowledge’, Harvard GSD and Design, YouTube, 12th March 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CewnVzOg5w> [accessed 22/03/2022] . 15:15 secs. Braidotti context is convergence of the human coming into contact with hegemonic systems. ‘These are really the best of times and the worst of times. But how to think such dissonance” 13:34 secs

[5] Tristan Garcia, Form and Object: A Treatise on Things, trans. by Mark Allan Ohm and Jon Cogburn, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), p. 250.

ObliQue STRATEGIES of the withdrawn

This week, and as per my major project schedule I have started to construct the carcases for my Concrete Lampshade 2022 sculptures. (fig. 1 & 1a)This idea has been a continuum throughout my degree.