Mitsuyoshi Building, 1-3-5 Higashi Kanda, 2nd Floor, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan 101-0031 Phone 080 1358 5829 motus.fort@gmail.com
QUICK WHILE STILL クイック・ホワイル・スティル
● 動きながら静止しつづけること ： 動きが生じる場所・装置・基盤・フレームワークからはじめること
● 装置 ： 表現の出発点でありながら境界や領域としての像やイメージ
● 動きによって、または主題・思想・感情・一連の動きを伝える絵画というメディアに想定され／内在する特質によって
そして、次は枠組である。それは人物、かたち、花、時計、動物、言葉？これらのモノになりつつある絵画、そして同様に、物質としての絵画の特質と行
為を写すレンズとしてのモノ。これらの像は、絵画の不名誉な歴史に内包される構造である。
このような機能は「方法は目的を正当化する」という警句にもあるように、まったく補完的なものだ。そして、少なくとも目的ではなく方法に関するものであ
る。すべての主要な絵画は、この方法と目的という古典的な両極の間で変動する。このために、その一方から一方へと移動し、それらを操作し、または
言葉がその口調に影響されるのと同様、目的を方法に従わせるという手段がとられてきた。
絵画をイメージから引き離し、お互いは生成し再定義しあう補完的な存在だと言うこともできるだろう。これは、お互いに衝突し、境界がぶれ、入り混じる
という、継続して同時に成立する事実を説明するための唯一の方法である。たとえば、カメレオンのように変化する絵画を制作する目的は何だろうか。
絵画において木であること、逆に木において絵画であること？例えば、時計はどのように絵画行為を定義、いや、導くのだろう？逆に、どのように絵画行
為は時計を特徴づけるのだろう？その結果としての絵画は双方を定義せずに、強烈で刺激的な何かを放ち、早急な成文化と拒絶を越えることができる
のだろうか？繰り返そう、これは言語以前のことばである。つまり、方法は目的を、そしてその出発点を正当化するのだ。
*To maintain stillness in action: to work from a place, a set up, a foundation or framework within which action can occur
*A set up: an icon or image as a starting place but also a boundary or territory through which one can then express
*Through motion, and the supposed/inherent capabilities of the painting medium, of its handling to convey subjective content, a thought,
a feeling, a series of movements
What then is this framing; a person, a shape, a flower, a watch, an animal, a word? Painting becoming (i.) each of these things and these things
likewise standing as a lens through which to understand paint’s physical properties and the physical act of painting. These icons stand as
structures through which to situate a place within Painting’s inglorious history.
These functions are all reciprocal, with one caveat – the means justifies the ends. It is as much, if not more so, about the how, and not about the
what. Indeed the whole of that capital painting could be deemed as falling on a sliding scale between the how and the what, with classical
extremes at both ends. Here the choice has been made to navigate through one end to the other, to stack them, and decidedly subjugate the
what to the how, knowing full well that a word’s effect is ultimately defined by its utterance.(ii).
One could separate painting from image, and talk about them as reciprocal entities, each becoming and redefining the other. This is only a way
to talk about something, to make sense of this simultaneous fact that is continuous always - a rubbing-up-against one another, a blurring of
boundaries, and a mingling of interstices. What is the function of making painting exist as a chameleon, for example? What would be the tree-
ness of painting, and vice versa, the painting-ness of tree? How does, for instance, a clock define, no, guide its painting-of, and the reverse, how
does the painting-of inform a clock? Can the resultant painting un-define both, giving forth something that is intense and stimulating, and
beyond an immediate codification and renunciation? Again, this is the word before language. Again a means justifies an end, and in the end, a
beginning (iii).
Quick While Still presents the work of New York based artists Katherine Bernhardt, Kadar Brock, Mark Gibson, Matt Jones, John Newsom, and
Wendy White. This is Kadar Brock’s curatorial debut.
NOTES
i
“How could movements of deterritorialization and processes of reterritorialization not be relative, always connected, caught up in one another? The orchid
deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a
piece in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a
rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only
on the level of the strata—a parallelism between two strata such that a plant organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the same
time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming,
becoming-wasp of the orchid and becoming-orchid of the wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the
reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in the circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further.”
Delueze and Guittari, A Thousand Plateaus, Trans. Brian Massumi, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) 1983, p.10
“I wanted to make things where the experience of being in front of the painting was not determined necessarily by the iconography, but by how the imagery
ii
had been pushed through a process that altered our experiences when we were in front of it… The systems build experiences for the viewer. It’s different
because you do it one way rather than another way, even if the iconography stays the same. ” Chuck Close, Thinking Modern Lectures: Painting
Process/Process Painting, (New York: Museum of Modern Art) August 8, 2007.
“Here and there does not matter/We must be still and still moving/Into another intensity/For a further union, a deeper communion/Through the dark cold
iii
and the empty desolation,/The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters/Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.” TS Eliot, “East Coker”
Four Quartets, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), 1973, p.32.
Quick While Still
October 30 through November 28
Katherine Bernhardt
Mark Gibson
Kadar Brock
Wendy White
John Newsom
Matt Jones