​

 

“ A good painting to me denounces its own ties so that you are not able to remember it correctly ,Thus it generates other images ” – Luc Tuymans .

 

The subjectivity（autonomy）of painting

I have been brought into thinking by the word “subjectivity” that was come up with by the discussion and debates in the MA painting reading groups  last month, which talked about the impermanent authorship and relationship between the artists and their oeuvre. since painting as an individual existence that is able to have its own relationship and connection with the spectators and society, which means finishing studio practices represents the end of the artists’ entanglement to their work but not the whole artistic circulation , instead , when being exhibited in public art work  will introduce a new interrelationship and friction into the bound between itself and its audiences, at the meantime viewers look to art and often seek out something familiar . 

 

Selection of source images

 

Artists’ working based on referential photographs has been the mainstream for a long time ,In term of selecting source imageries, the inevitable confrontation comes from the information i have been receiving from, for instance ,the mass media in daily life, global events, some images are visually loaded and uncanny according to its content and information contained, and some look banal and universal but are actually loaded by its relevance to a specific period or circumstance . Thus It’s useful to return to the artist Luc tuymans ,whose subject range from the stultifying banal ( embroideries, Christmas decorations ornamental plates ) through images with existential ramifications ( portraits , mannequins ,diagnostic images based on medical textbooks ) to images directly related to some of the most heinous events of the twentieth century ( The Holocaust, the political turmoil of the Belgian congo ) meanwhile ,if we look into the working processes of Gerhard Richter ,there was a huge private collection of photograph from albums , newspaper and magazines… his work “ Atlas ” contains a hundred photographs pertaining to the political group. Also Richters’ studio album contains 102photographs of varying quality, and he intended to paint a large selection of those pictures. 

 

Working method and process

 

As an artist specializing in painting, I concern about how to arrange the colors , shapes and the inner structure of the ongoing picture in order to weave my own concept system, therefore fostering an working approach and methodology that contextually sustain my artistic concepts and theoretical ideas is constantly the core part of my studio practice, How to deal with different subjects through your own sophisticated execution. In fact, my position is against to a series of discourse painting that straightforwardly transmits certain strong artists’ subjectivities and opinions or the information from source images to spectators using exaggerated painterly objects and conflicting colors . Because now in the age of mass media, some straightforward sensitive and conflicting images are not capable of  arousing viewers’ sense of empathy or interests to those scenarios. And the manners for the circulation of images in the post-truth era have been significantly distinct from that in the past. Meanwhile , As akey word in 2016, the ' post-true ' has been constantly presented and discussed, by which it means that Bassically we have entered the post-true era where people tend to question the realness and validity of an image and put the truth aside, rather to discuss the significance of this image or , of that situation . So I would switch my focuses of thinking to what is behind the image ，in this transition my paintings serve as a space where the superficial is being internalized，where the topics and concepts are also being enbedded and integrated in the inner structure of the paintings as well as the painterly language 。in which ，the collaberation between vision and the body is resistant to the one-off colouring which is rather impotent ，technically most of the color worked out has been through a number of adjustments or overlayings。

 

I would like to reflect upon a recent exhibition "offshore" by Chinese artist Changlong li ，in which some questions have been raised ，including “what are the functions of painting in the advent of  the society of the spectacle and the continuously upgraded visual technology that keeps altering the means we recognize the world" and " how to transmit artist's attitude and reflection on the social or individual issues by rehearsaling the painting language , something like the multilayered color 、outlines and the internal structure of painting on canvas ." And his exhibition has brought about a good explanation . （Changlong Li 2018）

 

My working procedures almost pay attention to the current news , so some of them might be inevitablely involved with political elements or objects, However ,which cannot only be defined as the derivative of politics or the political painting that usually has the has the strong association with the " discourse painting " I mentioned above ,  in which the dzalling and very garish , loud and eye-catching kind of color and the sensitive or overstated gesture are largely granted places . Rather it is more likely to deem my work as nothing more than a kind of response to the political information . At this point , For Luc Tuymans , how he deals with the historically political events . Technically , he made a difference in the painterly manner compared to others , for example , in his series of  " still life " paintings that have applied a majority of the pale color , the slightly vague figure and weakened contrast , he highlights the sense of regression , but he does not see it as much as a regressive way of treating certain issues, he would rather describe it as a form of affirmation as a statement,which is a tougher statement than it in the early works, those were more naive ,pared back to the essential and communicated in a simpler way , which was also a graphic way ,when it comes to the 'regressive of work' ,the viewer has to cope with a different kind of confrontation, percisely when the paintings are apparently more naturalistic，the level of predictability falls . Therefore in his interview he declared that “I wanted to response on a political level to the so-called discourse with an intentionally apolitical formula so I chose sublimation as my method I don't believe that you can really instill a work of art with a political charge ,it may take in a political meaning at some specific historical moment , but it should not have that kind of an illustration function" ( Julian Heynen 2004 P.8 ）

 

Recently , after reviewing the lecture by artist Hanna Malallah in the last month ,I was reminiscent of  one period when several of my art work - paintings that attempted to bring about the impression of death , ruin , and devastating scenes , connecting to the subject- wars caused by humaninty crisis and international interrelationships in the Middle East  . For Hanna As a Iraq her real association with war allows her to express more reality , throughout her works ,which include large-scaled installations , experiments of material ,sculptures and photographs , She tries to bridge the ambitious space between subject (destruction , ruins , war , trumatization) and material (burnt fabrics , metal , glass , mild carbon steel etc.) so as to introduce viewers the  three-dimensional access to the war. While at that moment I realize that due the lack of perception to the real scenes , my work actually are able to be free from the limits of war , politic related subject and returned to the noumenon of painting (dealing with painterly issues), and so as the purpose of my working , instead of transmitting the signal and message of something superficial and cynical , which gradually shifted to evoking audiences awareness, resonance or the curiosity by demonstrating the indirect disharmony and unease . So again , to bring up the suggestion that in the current society, the consumption of spectators has been dominated by the eye-catching image or video , for instance , the ruins and chaos left by explosion etc. , that force them to be increasingly indifferent in the confrontation with such spectacles (tired of such confrontations). Hence , No matter how monumental or pointless the objects are ,what really matters is the way in which you treat them. I would like to highlight the significance of equal treatment as a part of my working methods , also it functions  in terms of raising public awareness , if we look at the Luc Tuymans' methodology- " Tuymans has flatten out the hierarchy of  he genres of painting that exist within his own practice He paints a carboard box with as much care and attention as he paints a gas chamber, this treatment hints at a wider political and iconographic significance , but also suggests how Tuymans has developed his method for representing the uncanny the repressed in order to achieve a collective historical resonance,which is buried within the personal and the subjective. "( Emma Dexter 2004 P.16  )

 

As the painter utilizing photography as the source images and in talking about Methodology it is impossible to skip the reviews of the contribution by Gehard Richter . " by monumentalizing photograph on canvas as well as by using painterly means to produce it , he took it a long way from its starting point as a photograph ,the resulting picture of an image became by virtue of being in a different medium and of existing under different conditions and in a different format , a work that existed according to its own laws " ( Gotz Adriani ,2009, P18 ) I believe that here the laws represent the painterly language in methodology . Moreover, despite all issues artists need to cope with are related to technique and mediums , One factor that remains to be awarded of is the message or the original loads ,wether they are left to be authentic or deconstructed for some reasons and processes through the transferring from photography to the teaditional medium .  " in his painterly treatment,even the every acquires the unreal dimension of a second-hand reality ,raising the question as to how far the ostensible nature of Richter's painting stands for the deceptive truth of his motifs " "Do we believe that we can recognize this truth in what he depicts ... as the picture's false title falsely suggests ,or are we merely confronted with an enlarged reproduction of a photograph from ...? It's possible that we only get closer to the truth by knowing more about the people represented ( Gotz Adriani ,2009, P21) Therefore ,how the message disseminate and being deconstructed through the context (language) of painting with the contemporary mass media and the ever changing environment for image circulation . should we question it ?,should we keep curious about the authenticity?

 

Bibliography

 

Dexter，E and Heynen，J. 2004 . Luc Tuymans. Tate Modern, London

 

Adriani，G . 2009 . Gerhard Richter painting from private collections . Hatje Cantz 

 

Loock，U . 2003 . Luc Tuymans . Phaidon Press Ltd 

 

Ammer，M & Joselit，D & Hochdorfer，A . 2016 . Expression in the Information Age . Museum Branfhorst & mumok . London , New York

 

Tuymans，L . 2016 . Luc Tuymans glasses . Museum an de Stroom

 

Li，C，L . 2018 . Offshore(exhibition) , Hive Center For Contemporary Art . Beijing

 

Debord，G . 1967 . The society of the spectacle . Bucket-Chastel . Paris

 

McComiskey，A . 2017 . Post-Truth Rietoric and Composition . Utah State University Press . The U.S

 

 

Mcintyre , L . 2018 . Post-Truth . Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The U.S