| In my efforts to make art, I am
aware of this inner private zone of relativity, the idea of and in my work is to translate
this internal space, and to make that, plastic. My method is to search in the material
itself, as if to submerge into that private inner space carrying the tools that I use in
the external realms of practical and objective reality, the materials to make the work
become the search vehicle for an inner reasoning to emerge. I teach myself firstly,
secondly, an object is fashioned that represents the process of an experiment in
concentration, looking, meditating, seeing and doing. I am searching for some thing, I did
not know previously, as if examining a personal program that was installed by some
methodology of God, a "talent", perhaps a set or range of skills that were not
given or inherited by an other person. In the
study of yoga, the principle of actionless action is a sacrifice of this dialogue and
process, to examine and allow a deeper immersion into the experimental processes of
searching and self teaching, the action is represented in the external manifestation as
the practice of skill, and the employment of a personal understanding of what constitutes
discipline. Yoga implies the necessity of the refinement of skills and the development of
language.
In this mode, the personality is sublimated and can afford to
remain dispassionate, whole, the divisions of the psyche are channeled into a discipline
of concentration. A fire is created that consumes all forms of relative judgement, thought
passes through black holes and becomes compressed, as would be a laser focusing light,
skill, the outward "expression" can be allowed to evolve.
The discipline only further reinforces the dichotomy betwixt
this inner and outer, the urgency is to maintain balance, to maintain the fine line
equilibrium between these two real dimensions of relativity, each full of seductive
secrets, each with the personal historical claims to legitimacy. It is as if the action of
making art equalizes these two relativities, in this sense, the work that I make is more
about creating visual "opportunities" than fulfilling aesthetic paradigms.
I’ve had a lot of "training", most of which
was self imposed, periods of time where I spent in association with others, absorbing. I
still do this as a teacher, where I interface with other students in a searching and
learning process, to investigate and become bewildered, fascinated and intrigued. The
training goes on as the submersion and the balancing processes become more discerning,
more refined and hopefully more subtle, the discipline aims at a kind of personal economy
where more is compressed into less. I was always fascinated by the one inch punch, where a
martial artist would send a person back ten feet by the force of qi, the concentration of
massive power with the most apparent minimal expenditure of energy.
The "art" of the Egyptians was so precise in its
rendering, the scribes were adept in their methodologies, and their works have the quality
of a most subtle precision. The entire Egyptian logos is particular in this respect, a
macro investigation into the ordering of space and time, a sort of geometric dimensional
philosophy that our present mystics, philosophers, and scientists are now coming to terms
with, as the mathematics begins to emerge again, as though it had been cloaked by
centuries of ignorance.
Working in this context of mindscape and landscape places the
"I" at the center of the dialogue between ideas of selfhood, identity, and the
necessity and pragmatics of creaturely behavior. The identity is submerged and becomes
sublimated behind the processes and the objects created, language and work become fused in
an attempt to unify these divisions of self. The working becomes the methodology to create
and maintain sensible balances, as well as to enjoy for its relative aesthetic results,
properties, and rewards.
The attitude in the work is also to play, cancel and
re-invent, to overturn the regular notions of objective reality that I am prone to –
the "I" inhabits a mechanism called a body, which becomes from conception to
death, a time machine in which the "I" is carried, through which the
"I" expresses itself. The notion of transcendental freedom is the result of the
recognition of this division of the psyche, and the attempt to escape from creaturely
embodiment. All religion emphasizes this attempt to be born again into light, into a more
cosmic understanding of this unavoidable encasement and the descent of spirit into the
material, the endless configurations of soul.
In playing, I recognize that the actions are beyond the
limitations of word or philosophies, the mind is unlocked into a sense of haphazardness,
an intuitive reasoning takes over to experiment in this condition of apparent lawlessness.
Interacting with the materials, playfully, allows the option to go beyond previous notions
of style, in playing you learn to do things in other ways, in painting, to engineer
another plastique. When at work it is to trick myself, fool my conscious everyday self,
have fun with my notions of reality with this extra program of capability. I am conscious
of an act of bringing myself to an arena as if to wrestle with issues, ideas, and hunches,
that are present in my relativity as a person in this environment. To pass my experiences
through the filters of the working and concentration processes, and in that, to see what I
can come up with, the intention is ti discover a surprise. As if to begin in objective
reality and move backwards and inwards, to re- emerge in an "outer" again,
having passed through an experiment and re-assessment, whilst engaged in an external
process of making some thing.
It has taken me several years to write this, and to
understand how an attitude or philosophy has grown with me inside the very private realms
of the studio. I have been conscious of having an anti position to a localized view of
what may constitute " good form " and correct technique, and taking a certain
amount of delight in offending our local guardians of taste. I saw it as my place to apply
myself to the honest expression of my dialogue, even if it meant not being understood by
those who would profess to have, own, or control the mechanisms for our, and even my
cultural and intellectual advancement. It has been necessary to engage in sometimes open
confrontation with agents of this localized "tradition", in many ways I have
seen this as a kind of war, a fight to break open the stranglehold of pervasive island and
class expectations, that would have us all make "nice work" that could be easily
absorbed to decorate the homes and offices of a cultural elite, continually fishing for
status objects. In many ways this is a kind of political position, to reform the spaces of
aesthetic engagement, to occupy and declare presence without shame and without apology.
A kind of paranoia has haunted our local market, a deeply
rooted fear of emerging out of a chasm of nineteenth century isms and classifications,
that only vaguely define our present cultural and geographical spaces, a market arena
swamped by notions of a " sentimental classical Caribbean landscape ". In this
environment, I call it the "shadow of Cazabon", an unhealthy homage to an
historical eurocentric precedent, en plein air. "Artists" depicting acreage of
lush foliage and fauna, carefully omitting the " in yuh face " evidence of this
very present, modern, consumerist orientation and its very obvious effects in the
landscape, whilst diligently engaged in the production of an absolute commodity, devoid of
conscience, devoid of the realism, that is the essence of this oeuvre. This
"tradition" is essentially a form of legitimized hypocrisy, and time and time
again it has been used to denote and define our spaces for aesthetic engagement and
practices in the fine arts.
My "work" has been an examination of these
boundaries of consciousness, to examine the dialogue between what I perceive as real and
surreal, or unreal, an investigation that could cause you to admit that there is a fine
line between truth, or what is perceived as truth, and fiction. I believe we live in an
experimental zone where our historical mixing presents new equations of relevance in this
time, and we are forced as individuals, and as a tribe, to re – evaluate our language
and signage systems, as our social environment cracks, and attempts to emerge out of
outdated and irrelevant historical precedents. I believe that some artists in the region
understand this crisis of identity and the need for deliberate reformation of their
linguistic attitudes and spaces, to create new meanings aside from the expectations handed
down by tradition, history, and blood.
EDWARD BOWEN November 18, 1998.
|
Essays