Issue No. 1

MFA Thesis Paper Part II

By Eric Hancock ⋅ August 30, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print this article ⋅ Post a comment

Post-Repetition: Tzaraismiosity

As a living, breathing non-entity that fosters a heterocosm of working modalities, Contemporary art allows for a spate of contradictions. Here, in essence I am referring to the functioning of language. I began to experience the contradiction inherent to artistic languages early as a maturing artist. The first mature works that gained recognition from my peers and professors were completed out of extreme frustration-frustration being a loose word for a generally pervasive angst induced by the aesthetic and intellectual loosening of laurels, also known in the art world as deskilling. The works were torn illustrations from an art history book. The pages were chin coled on paper. The paper was then sparsely embellished with velvet forms, which interacted with/obscured the underlying book pages. For the first time, I was divested of the responsibility of dealing with morality within my work, of defining truth within my personal practice. There was a freedom that accompanied a truly dialogical piece like the collage piece. I was no longer beholden to the pure quest for truth. I had become like Socrates, a perennial tryer of things, an expositor of truth, truths that were inherently false because of the plurality of meaning and language. I consider the body of work that I will be discussing here a conceptual successor to that early experimental work. As indicated in the title, I have nominated the phrase Post-Repetition: Tzaraismiosity as conceptual framework which to view the works through. . The name of the exhibition and premise of the show is neither an artist statement, nor an attempt to comprehensively determine my work with a hermeneutical reading. The premise is an attempt to extrapolate truths based on observations I have made about my own process, which can in turn be applied back into my work. Post-Repetition serves as a category that describes the work in terms of its relationship with the Repetitive strategies of 70’s conceptualism and on. Tzaraismiosity gets more to the heart of the rhetorical thesis to the thesis exhibition. Tzaraismiosity is a ridiculously coined term that refers to new genesis of meaning through a refusal of meaning as attempted by the Dadaist, and especially Tristan Tzara, founder of Dada. Tzaraismiosity, as a phrase, is also closely related to Dada’s namesake, which was chosen for its symbolically empty, but potentially meaningful quality. I have avoided using the term ‘Dada’ explicitly in the name as to avoid the categorical and conceptual baggage that historical art movements are leaden with. As a label and a mantra, Dada was not intended to defy meaning per se. Conversely, in a quintessential Romantic way, Dada was intended to reinvest artistic creation with its humanity and its generative zeal. Dada was an attempt to compare the arbitrary, but organic magic of language generation to the human imperative to make art. Similarly, the ridiculous term, Tzaraismiosity is meant to pastiche language, combining an artificially coined art term, Tzaraism with the exaggerating colloquialism, ‘osity’, a suffix that actually means an ironic quality of existence. The term is meant to emphasize the mutability of language, and nevertheless maintain a discourse within that language. The work in the exhibition is a material symbol for the boundary between meaning and non-meaning.
My working process is born from my intuition about the possibilities inherent not only to the working of materials, but the discursive field that the dialogue of materials belongs. In some senses, an evaluation of the discursive nature of the art-making community is antithetical to the working of materials and the subsequent evaluation of the results of manipulation. Simultaneously, I have been working on several bodies of work, all of which involve the discourse of economy and wider zeitgeists with ideas and material, as well as the ontological questions that the work in turn implies. Throughout the process, the questions that arise as a result of aesthetic questioning conflicts with the drive to create or manifest as much ‘form’ as possible. This dialectical posturing has provoked me to insert the questions directly into the horizon of the artwork, allowing me to present the perennial dichotomy between the forest and the trees by introducing as a sign a visual short circuit between the forest and the trees. This method of poetic scrambling is a stylistic hallmark of what has become known as Bad art, and thus releases the work from meta-explanations or information outside of the horizon of the art work. My works contain within them vestiges of the art-making process, but more importantly, imply the ghostly presence of the artist. Because the works are inherently sloppy and seemingly un-semantic, the viewer is allowed to question the role of the artist. Opposition to this theoretical position may assert the fact that because the art object or semantic horizon of the art act is hidden, or already included in the viewers intuitions about any art expression that any such ontological probing of the semantic horizon of the art expression will be reduced to questioning of the artist’s integrity as a producer of meaning. Subsequently, irony and humor are major components in my work. Irony, with its intrinsic polyvalence, has the ability to convey double, as well as oppositional meanings. Irony is cultivated through the use of tableau and the arbitrary use of semantic forms. Philosophical questioning of the artist’s role within my work is further established by using the artist’s studio and tools as components in a tableau. Re-enacting the studio and its contents have the effect of indicating to the viewer that the site of the artistic expression has been prioritized as opposed to the artistic object, indicating that the genesis of artistic expression has already occurred. This prioritizing of the site of creativity serves as an analogy to the moment of creation, and for me functions as a symbol for the artistic usage of language within any artwork. The emphasis on semantics of form and double-speak irony is tied historically to Socratic irony, and mirrors current trends in contemporary art, which set up restricted, but open forms of ironic dialogue, i.e. as exemplified in the work of Rachel Harrison and Michael Krebber.
Irony shows up for the fist time in Plato’s dialogues as eironeai, a term that denotes a performative form of truth seeking. The holistic rhetorical and stylistic irony that Socrates is described as using in his dialogues is more of a cadence as opposed to a singular rhetorical mechanism or its more contemporary manifestation as a cultural slur against anything that seems overly abstruse . The term’s current malicious usage in the realm of cultural criticism, i.e. as an obscurer of meaning, distorts its influential history and its descriptive power in a Contemporary context. Irony, although ostensibly nebulous as a descriptive term, has recently gained more credibility in theoretical discourses, especially because of rising interests in Romantic ideology. This contemporary focus on irony is germane insofar as theory has shifted its focus from semiological concerns. Appropriately, I look to the notion of irony as a point of departure for the sculptural nature of my work
Descriptions of ancient, Romantic, and more contemporary forms of irony as floating are prolific within literary criticism. The floating, or conversely, textually embedded nature of irony has caused critics to question its effectiveness as a stylistic category. Lars Ellestrom states that “[i]rony signals consequently exist (if at all) only in relationship to cultural codes,” foregrounding the expansive task required in order to make effective ironic interpretations. Ellestrom goes on to explain, “ It is only within certain discursive communities that certain textual traits may be understood to be irony signals.” Thus, one could conclude that irony is not a singular linguistic, experiential, or literary entity but an indicator of disjunction, or a seam within a network of signifiers where contradiction is exposed, and what Lacan calls the symbolic is exposed. This seam or tincture within the symbolic has aesthetic correlates.
Especially within the work of Rachel Harrison, sculptural seams or interventions are represented in the form of language shifts within each sculpture. This shift in language is analogous to the first appropriations used by early collage artists. As collage was ushered into the language of modern art, disjuncture became commonplace, as did the practice of using arbitrarily introduced words and phrases to signify discontinuity. Harrison has adapted the process into her fully sculptural idiom. The sculptural thereness of Harrison’s sculptures also points to the semantic horizon within Harrison’s work. This sculptural thereness is a heightened version of what Michael Fried called the theatricality inherent in Minimalism. Fried postulated that Minimalism’s relationship with the purity of form was perverted by the viewers’ engagement with the shear scale and uncanniness of the industrial and slick materials of minimalist sculptures. Contemporary sculpture like Harrison’s that attempts to underscore the viewers relationship with a simultaneously rhetorical/theatrical sculptural statement and a material statement clarifies with form what Fried correctly identified as a theatrical gesture. The theatricality that Fried describes is clearly congruous with the history of poetic and artistic locution. Literary ironic distortion is accompanied by an ironic constriction of the horizon of modes of expression and relatedly a widening of contextual influence. Historically, this increase in ironic distortion within the artwork has resulted in the singularizing of the textual object; this linguistic mutation also sets the stage for the emergence of the modern conception of Art. Additionally, the irony inherent in the tableau nature of my work can also be related to Ellestrom’s theories on Architectonics. Ellestrom indirectly alludes to an aspect of Shakespearean irony when he explains, “the ironic relationships between reality and pretense and between the identification and detachment of the spectator are parallels to the spatial relationship between audience and actors in the classical theater.” He goes on to describe Rozik’s theory that theaters are architectonic places for the audiences “ironic contemplation”. This architectonic ironic contemplation could be described as being at the root of the modern art movement; the canonization and institutionalization of art making brought the discursive and ultimately insidiously self reflective nature of modern art making. In fact, treating language in general, and going further, thought as essentially propositional, like a Wittgensteinian game, is essential in understanding the increasingly architectonic nature of Modern art. The exhibition of art, and the resulting architectonic quality of exhibition has become defacto in the language of art. Furthermore, Lars Ellestrom describes that for the first time in literary history a fragmentary collective consciousness warranted the onset of a Romantic literary irony that used the “conjunction of opposites: both/and…rather than either/or”, the classical method of irony Additionally, poetry became a harbinger for the instability taking hold in Romantic culture. It’s exploration of ungrammaticality and a revolutionarily decentered format represented a semiotic indicator for a better and more whole representation of the human experience. Jonathan Culler describes Samuel Coleridge’s position on the new poetic signification:
“Coleridge [formulated] the notion of the poem as heterocosm, or self-contained universe, which must display organic unity and achieve the resolution of contraries; the conception of organic forms and the inseparability of form and content; and finally the conception of good poetry as the product of a unified sensibility, or imagination which fuse together though and feeling-in general, the notion that a poem must not mane, but be.”
The system that Coleridge alludes to has to rely on the assumption that ungrammaticality is not a means of miss-signification. Similarly, in poetic semiosis, distortion within the parameters of a signifying system, i.e. the poem, causes a reciprocal constriction of the horizon of modes of expression and relatedly a widening of contextual influence. The concept corresponds also the Romantic notion that as the voice becomes stronger, more personal, the more fractured and incomprehensive the voice becomes. As will be seen in my sculptural tableaus, establishing a horizon of experience and locution within each work will be crucial in understanding the ungrammaticality of each work.
In keeping with the statements above, the exhibition is comprised of a series of sculptural tableaus. Studio Configuration IV is constituted by metal rolling cart with a laptop computer placed on the top. The laptop will be looping the song “The Way You Move” by Outcast. The laptop computer powers a fan, which in turn aerates a container of protein powder that is crudely affixed to the rolling cart. The sculpture has the effect of producing smell, sound, and sight, and produces a casual sense of intentionality while resisting interpretations that could be derived from the configuration of it’s moving parts. The sculpture will retain its artificiality and stillness as a living object without participating in a dialogue of new form. As discussed above, theatricality is central to the piece. The physical processes occurring in the work, i.e. the blowing, the playing of music, and the stillness of the sculptural readymade all contribute to a the heterogeneity of sculptural language within a set circumstance. The components of the sculpture become actors in a situation as much as being elements in a formal aesthetic system.
The next sculpture in the exhibition is comprised by a readymade in the form of a fan and the corresponding growling sound produced by it. I consider this a tableau in that the fan is fully formed and functional prior to exhibition, thus again stifling a dialogue of form and ocular aesthetics. The title of the piece, Chewbacca Fan, further enhances the artificial nature of its presentation by emphasizing that the observation that the fan sounds like Chewbacca was already made. The observation that the piece existed somewhere else and at a different time cultivates a past life but somehow doesn’t deaden the illusion that the scene is still happening before the viewer. The piece is tinged with humor, which further enhances the idea that this scene, which is rooted in its past, is being transported into the present.
Wall Painting II is a sculpture composed of a bank of second-hand spray painted TVs with groceries placed on top. The televisions receive static and their cacophonous white noise throughout the gallery space. Again, an attempt has been made to convey with the sculpture/painting the look and feel of artificiality, or tableau. The rough-hewn nature of the sculpture ultimately references theatrical stage sets simulating outdoor and indoor scenes through the use of mixed media. The static playing on the tubes of the televisions represents the original genesis of creativity. The TVs receive a non-sense signal that cannot be recoded to form picture and sound. The static also forms as a metaphor for attempts by the Dadaists to strip cultural expression back down to bare bones. This clean slate analogy represents both an original pre-information nothing state and the originary moment of creativity. For the Dadaists, stripping art from its bourgeois affiliations was important as was generating the impetus for a new art movement. Similarly, Wall Painting II in its messiness, seeming uncriticality, and formal metaphor symbolizes this dual drive in creative genesis.
Like, Wall II, Wall Painting symbolizes the burst of energy that denotes the nebulous area in the originary moment of creativity. In its inattentiveness to formal polish and its garish color and rhetorical perspective, the sculpture gestures towards process and the credibility of the original artistic intuition. The painting is composed of drywall, spray paint, acrylic, and cigarette butts. The expression sprayed across the front of the panels reads, ‘wwwwhhheeeewwww’. Again, the phrase symbolizes a return to an original state, in the sense that the sculpture already points back to process, and in the sense that the sculpture’s phrase can be linked to the creativity inherent in the first moments of utterance, akin to a baby’s first incomprehensive attempts to make language. Only, within the discursive art field, language is efficiently comprised of positive creation and negation. Creative discourses are built off of seemingly destructive processes. Additionally, sometimes, positive discourses are sparked by the initial negativity of negative discourses. An example of this phenomenon is especially apparent in the contemporary affinity for basing painting off of the annihilation of photographs. The progressive annihilation of the photograph as seen in the work of Gerhard Richter and others has sparked an interest the material possibilities generated by not only painting into the photograph but painting onto the photograph. Painting onto the photograph has the effect of highlighting the credible primacy of non-mediated human creation, highlighting both the naturalness of creating and the unnaturalness of using technology to recreate experience. This discussion about the proper role of mediation in human locution and expression is further underscored by the use of materials in a messy way. The sculptures included in current exhibition use this messiness and ungrammaticality to reclaim technologically unmediated processes both as a valid way of working and as a functioning metaphor within the work itself.
The primary sculptures discussed above will be supplemented by secondary sculptures. Studio Configuration I, II, III includes piles of studio detritus displayed on the floor and wall paintings that approximate the scrawling and graffiti on my studio walls. To heighten the feeling of activity and real-time action, clothing and domestic linens are displayed in the exhibition: T-shirts, ECT. The clothing induces in the viewer the feeling of a crime scene, or a scene in which experience and narrative is deduced from vestigial debris.
The placement of the components in the exhibition throughout the gallery space was organized in order to strike the correct balance between arbitrary and carefully considered, according to the underlying premise that the sculptural elements should maintain a semblance of human interaction while fostering chaos. Again, according to the Dadaist reference in the title of the exhibition, community is an important part of the creed of removing boundaries. Also, paradoxically, along with the assertion of individuality that Dada provokes comes a simultaneous annihilation of individuality. Dadaist work is remarkably homogenous in style, and Tzara and others in the movement tended to gain not only momentum but also the driving impetus for the movement from an immediate community. Jumping forward for a contemporary example, “Wet Pain” at Maccarone by Dan Colen and Nate Lowman is an exhibition that muddies the distinction between the two artists. Not only is it not apparent which artist does which piece; there is also ambiguity in the singularity of each sculptural configuration. Each piece melds into the piece beside it, and to add to the confusion, the song “Tequila” is the solvent further homogenizing the entire experience. One comes away from the experience feeling as if the holistic experience was significant, as opposed to distinguishing stylistic or rhetorical singularity. Jerry Saltz, criticizing the exhibition described it as simultaneously feeling like now and feeling dated. Perhaps Lowman and Colen’s intention was to evoke a discourse on time. After all, the sculptures in the exhibition were intentionally nostalgic, probably harkening back to the young artists’ remembrance of 80’s and 90’s ephemera. Additionally, such stylistic homogenizing as referred to earlier in this paper has the effect of signifying to the viewer their experience of marking time through distinguishing markers. Time is marked through the feeling of duration but also through the non-temporal intervention of static memories and memory mile markers. This schema has the effect of evoking a discourse on time while also suspending it in favor of the ontologically free, and ultimately carnivalesque environment of a community, also a reference to the decentering of Dadaism.
The exhibition and the thesis project, as a whole was valuable endeavor that allowed me not only to clearly delimit a critical and artistic niche, but to identity tangents that may allow for extended thinking about my own work. I hope that with the exhibition and the supporting documents I have clearly stated a position, and been unambiguous in my intention to be authentic, honest, and creative in the process.

for additional figures navigate to http://erichancockpaintings.com