Reductions and reformulations, May-August 2023

Disparate reductions and reformulations starting from diverse elements out of the Seven Sins series and various other fragments partly to be seen in my studio accrochage in May 2023. Continuing with a method of copying, segmenting and enhancing, and focussing on captivating or intriguing elements, I tried to enlarge and colorize, interpret and alter by means of charcoal, pastel and chalk drawings, leading to several works on different formats, some part of small series. Again, the recurrent problem here is the possible loss of formal relevancy of the treated elements: in some cases though, the fact of overruling the first impression of a trace by transforming it, allows a new proposition to gain autonomy and to detach itself from its original motive. The problem here is not 'what to draw/paint/show' but how to 'save' a new formal proposition from the trace/fragment that functions as its original motive. Since the new treatment or the translation generally 'kills' the fascination that a trace might exert - it would lose its impact with time anyway - the only way to proceed is to develop the new image as something on its own and detached from the explicit trace that caused it. In other words, articulating a new image in correspondance to its lacking 'cause' (not the direct visual trace that provoked) helps developing it properly. The 'lacking cause' of each newly developed image is of course the maker/author himself as a lacking cause to himself, a 'point' from which no articulation as such is actually possible or at least: no clear or definable relation to that lacking cause (thus: the creative subject as a trace) is translatable as such. Meaning: once I go beyond the first fragment that triggered me to make a drawing (to 'translate' that first trace into a new image) I can only develop the drawing in relation to its in fact lacking cause (which is me as a lacking cause to myself), which is not expressable as such. That relation to one's groundlessness, to put it differently, cannot inform in a defined sense what I am making/drawing. At best I can let certain impressions, associations, memories and contingencies influence the working process, but this can barely happen methodically. (I can 'open up' though for those dimensions while working as one could for example provoke excitement or a state of sadness while painting or dancing.) Moreover, since this lacking cause (or cause as lack) is at best a general disposition to be uncovered while working (as it can be in certain conversations one holds or other specific activities in life) the work doesn't really find proper cause or reason nor corresponding directives or formal rules. At best, one can then develop an image in conformity with its 'own' needs, rules or formaliteits, but what are they except what I, as a lacking cause to myself, do vaguely sense to be a 'good intuition', a 'valid proposition', an 'interesting intervention' and so on. The work in development does not 'speak' to me, it does not say how it should be developed, since it is only I who tries to 'express' myself as a lacking cause through it - unless, of course, I develop an image as part of a predefined artistic program, e.g., conflict of color. In order to bypass the dead-end of subjectivity-as-informer (not subjectivity as accepted and assumed dimension of life and work), one can from such a point on only proceed toward processes of formalization of that kind, i.e.: implementation of implicit and explicit rules and aspects to be recognized and extracted from these temporary, intermediary or even failed propositions. Formalization in that sense is not objectivation as de-subjectivation but the 'sublime' and hence 'objectified' form of subjectivity: giving shape and relief to formalities that come forth from subjectivity in the first place, subjectivity here understood as one's cultivated relation to the lacking cause to oneself.

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