A Note on Visual Abstraction
If thoughts run through my mind while working it is questions — about what I’m doing in the moment and why. And, answers (or attempts thereof, at least)
I’m interested in what happens to a thing when you strip it down to only what’s important. That’s nothing new — it’s the essence of minimalism (be it in art, music, or life at large)… or, for that matter, abstraction.
But the minimalists went wrong somewhere. They were purists, in search for something like a higher good, a spirituality to be reached through art. That’s a beautiful idea, and a noble one. But how does purification in practice really look like? To purify, to decontaminate, to cleanse. To exterminate
There are two planes to an experience, call it the human and the spiritual. But if abstraction is a spiritual quest, then an absolute abstraction is one where the human being is abolished. You remove it, all of it — the emotion, the sensation. The jab to your lungs and shiver in your spine. Your broken knuckles and your heart
Perhaps that is the goal? To exist in a realm where none of those sensations matter. To drift in a place of non — being, an immateriality where matter is replaced by mind and not a trace of it remains
But without having gone through those dirty jagged blood — stained experiences you would not exist inside that space. And however messy and chaotic those encounters are you cannot do without them. And that quest for purity of yours is not just far — fetched and unlikely — it is an illusion.
Pure abstraction, just like perfect triangles and numbers, do not exist. They do inside our treaties on The Forms and our Universals. But not right here, and this is where we are. In fact, it is the only place we are, and ever will be
