Eye and Mind
Eyes are not the window to the soul, nor are eyes mirrors of the soul. Eyes are not the accessory of mind.
Rather, eyes are the temple of the soul. Eyes govern our vision, unite our bodily senses, give texture to our experience of the world.
Sharp vision makes receptive mind and refines perception to nuances.
Seeing is touching. Seeing is feeling.
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The eyes think through sensing, attentive or peripheral. The thinking of eyes is an activity without action, a process independent of linguistic reasoning. It is not an instinctual physical output.
Eyes inform and summarize what we know and what we yet to know through our direct engagement with the world. It is knowing without knowing, which means knowing through primordial experience than knowing through the post-analysis of intellect or linguistic means.
Seeing is knowing. Seeing is the key to the creation of meaning.
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An artist who thinks with eyes thinks through his/her body and expression-medium, which shapes his/her experience and conceptual making of the world in which meaning and value live and grow.
Mind is an embodied phenomenon.
Thoughts on Memory
The language of memory does not conform to verbal language.
It does not rely on linear logic to mediate and relate.
It is a map without measure, a story without before and after. It is a history told simultaneously.
Among the seemingly random chaos, each thread is both the beginning and an end of the other.
Wander about in the universe of memory, blindfolded, led by the invisible hands of threads, I sense, smell and hear better – a receptive being.
As the body of threads begin to shift and move me from here to there, east to west, right to left, back and forth, it weaves me into a structure through which a particular memory suddenly takes form. It, however, takes form visually like the sun rises above the horizon, an instantaneous illumination.
Like a photographer and a painter, I “see” the totality of my thought emerges out of the invisible moving hands of threads that bestow meaning to the elements of a memory – that smile, this frown or that gaze – through their inter-spatial relationship within the woven structure.
A Lesson from the Master
There are contemporary photographers whose works interest me and I take note of what they’re doing and compare the involvement of my work with theirs, such as JoAnn Verburg’s landscape and conceptual diptychs/triptychs, or Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs. Often I encounter these contemporary photographers’ work through my daily research on internet from galleries or museum collections.
As interesting as many contemporary artists’ works appear to me, I find it common to today’s art practice that many photographic works are too slick or too polished that there’s a general family resemblance among different artists’ work. Most works don’t address their strength through a persistent movement over time with integrated visual structure that represents the uniqueness of the photographic medium both on physical and the mental levels developed by the photographer. On the contrary, the merit goes to the technique and often the technique lures the viewers’ eyes so much that the allure of the lovely image itself stops its accomplishment there and couldn’t go further, deeper.
Although some artist’s work engaged with specific issue or theme consistently, there seem more similar works repeating what the artist is already good at than a further dialectic relationship between then and now of the artist’s work over time. It’s easy to shy away from further self-imposed challenge if your works are well-edited in commercialized and professional manner suited for market success. What interest me in contemporary artists’ work remains interesting but as I go forth to study them more, there’s little to gain from them. They’re interesting and that is all.
I’m looking for something that is ambitious to become a master than a successfully recognized artist in the market. I’m looking for a strong work that excites and challenges me to want to make something as good as it. I’m looking for artist who consistently works on similar theme or issue and is willing to further his/her direction implied in his/her already established so called style or accomplishment.
I am pleased to find out the newest works of Ray Metzker-Singular Sensation at Laurence Miller gallery (November 1, 2007 – January 12, 2008). Working on photography for over fifty years, he retains the same strength. Stephen Shore or Ralph Gibson whose works were once relentless in their vision of making fine photography, but now in their recent commercial works, the contamination of market driven style become obvious. It’s encouraging and exciting for me to see a master photographer who is now old and who is still working, not only that, he follows through what was implied in his earlier photographic involvement-dealing with “the abstract quality through representation” via specific urban-scape and landscape, which is extended to become today’s new series of photo-montage and collage. The new series that diminishes the object identity by way of the camera-less process, however, is not abstraction for its own sake but involves the implication of a representational world (landscape or exterior space especially) sometimes created through the nature of the medium without organic life, such as “Photogram # 53″.
On Beauty
I was asked in a recent class to talk about my “personal” definition of beauty. Contrary to the requested personal, particular and subjective definition, below is my quest of a definition of “beauty” that is not subject to the particular or the relative.
The attempt to define beauty in the western culture has a history as long as the origin of western philosophy. Aristotle thinks we are able to perceive beauty because there’s a “universal quality” inherent in things that makes an object beautiful. To simplify, an object is beautiful only if it carries such a universal characters within its existence. In a different period of time, however, Spinoza questioned, “is it because the object itself is beautiful or is it that we like the object we see so we feel it’s beautiful?” The possibility of the sense of beauty therefore has two opposing theories?objectivism and subjectivism. In an extreme case, beauty may be considered entirely individual, subject to one’s like or dislike. In a cultural setting such as contemporary art world, beauty becomes either relative or unquestionable academic formula.
What does beauty mean to me? Before I can define beauty, it’s necessary to acknowledge that there must be an object and a viewer, i.e., there must be a “seer” and “seen” relationship. Hence my point is both the objective (the object and its constituent structure) and the subjective (me, the seer, my individuality) have equal importance in the formation of my sense of beauty. I assume an object is beautiful because there’s certain quality essential to its existence that is capable of arousing my admiration and an inclination of appreciating its existence. The “quality” of that beautiful “object”, I agree with Aristotle, must be innate to its existence and not contingent which would otherwise make its beautifulness accidental. And that innate quality as crucial as it determines the beauty of an object must be “embodied” or “manifested” either on the surface or the orientation or simply the form of that object in order to be perceived. Thus the essential quality of a beautiful object is itself both material and abstract.
On the other hand, even though I as the seer has complete and normal sense organs and am capable of perceiving beautiful things, does that grant me the privilege that whatever I feel beautiful is beautiful? I think the minimal requirement for me to judge that one thing is beautiful and the other is not must because I’m able to carry out my sense organs’ full potential in perceiving the beautiful.
As we often think an artist is “more” capable of seeing the beauty than others, it’s not just because we have sharp sensitivity since we may apply our sharp sensitivity to the wrong situation. What makes a sensitive seer capable of sensing the beauty an object presents to us is the “receptiveness” of that sensitive seer’s mind and body. We all carry a series of personal history in our life and that constitutes part of our subjectivity. We need to be open and receptive enough in our eyes, ears, and our mind in order to recognize the signal of beauty “embedded” in things. We need to be open enough yet without loosing our sense of “direction” to conclude that anything goes; we need a direction and if necessary, the discipline of how to penetrate the innate structure of an object visually in order to recognize what makes it beautiful.
