A Discussion of the paintings of Albert Oehlen

a gallery talk given at Arnolfini, Bristol on Saturday 25 November 2006

Let me make something clear: I am not a connoisseur of painting. However, I am someone who likes to explore the relationship of painting (and other kinds of creative practice) to the world of ideas. Sometimes I'd call myself a 'dyslexic theorist', someone who looks at images and sees words. Although, they're not words ... they're thoughts and ideas, and evidence of our desires.

Standing here today, talking about painting and philosophy, I think: how trivial! This week a Russian 'spy' was (allegedly) poisoned. Why talk about paintings this afternoon? But then I imagine that spying itself might be encouraged by a belief in protecting the diverse patterns of human behaviour and various types of human relationships (of which this is one). I like to believe it is motivated by a determination to safeguard human action, representation and free will.

Images

And so to Oehlen. Oehlen was an influential figure in the mid to late 80s. He was seen as interested in methods of painting rather than theories of painting (although the two are more closely related than such a statement allows). According to his own accounts, Oehlen starts with an image, collage or print and starts 'treating it'. He says:

"I try to have something difficult or daring becasue the more daring it is, the more surprising the result is."

So Oehlen has a starting point and sets out on a journey. And like a road movie, perhaps, the work unfolds in a manner that is not tied to narrative conventions. He doesn't have something in mind that you would call 'an ending'. The original collage or image gives the painting a sense of direction but this does not amount to a PURPOSE. This is not goal-oriented painting.

"The idea is to have it and to be unhappy with it."

Some might call this approach unsystematic or, at least, one that is open to change. The word 'process' might be useful here, as the original image provides some kind of structure (or foundation) from which to launch the act of painting. This idea of an unsytematic approach is reinforced by the arbitrary nature of 'the rules' that he often establishes at the start of a project. These have included the following determinants:

"I want to make paintings on muddy ground, and, I want to use primary colours on top of them."

So, the paintings are about making an order through the process of composition - or the process of composing elements and following a loose set of rules. As he states: "I need a job to do, I don't have an aesthetic."

And with no aesthetic end in mind, he is able to say: "It doesn't matter if it's abstract art or if it's figurative, it's all the same. It's all formal."

AT WHICH POINT A MEMBER OF THE GALLERY TOUR FEELS DISHEARTENED. HE TREATS THE ACT OF PAINTING LIKE A MUNDANE JOB?! SHE IS DISAPPOINTED WITH THE ATTITUDE (SHE THINKS SHE IS HEARING).

However, this could all be part of his 'liberating' DIY Punk-like approach. His ideals - in this respect - seem to be the cause of his celebration in art schools of the 80s. He argues: "You see a sense no matter what the sense is." Likewise, he states that:

I can't do anything about that. No, beauty really can't be avoided in painting, where people are so ready to find things beautiful.

And this brings us to the job of critics whose job, traditionally, has been to provide or disclose 'the meaning' of a work (or body of work). Oehlen poses a challenge here, denying an intentional semantic outcome for his paintings. He accepts that meanings might be generated along the way, but when you start out by painting a duck, the connotations and consequences are unlikely to carry the same gravitas as the method of construction.

At this point, I introduce the ideas of Brian Massumi and the notion of 'affect'. This is a philosophical idea that suggests an image is not necessarily linked to content. The image's effect on the viewer should not be connected to its formal elements in a direct way. This is because, he argues, the strength of an image's reception is not lingusitic, cultural or representational, but tied up with "the event of image reception."

Massumi is interested in what makes us look (and keep looking) at something. He tries to describe the act of fascination: our being fascinated with things. This fascination is called 'intensity' and he tries to account for the various levels of engagement. this level of intensity is neither semantic nor semiotic, he argues. The strength of the image's effect depends on its emotional qualification. For instance, the qualifications provided by this very discussion and this time being set aside to contemplate the work on show. For Massumi, there is a problem with adding too much meaning to an image. Such logical qualification of the work can dampen its affect.

We are thereby encouraged to consider the paintings on display as 'image-events' and 'expression-events', experiences of intensity that work alongside narrative and the production of meaning. Narrative structures explain and devise rules of explanation, yet it is the nature of 'event' that it lacks structure or prefigurations. Image events are not linear nor predictable but full of suspense and expectation. Massumi continues:

"It is the collapse of structured distinction into intensity, or rules into paradox."

Such notions of events and intensities of experience allow for: "a tinge of the unexpected, the lateral, the innovative, to lines of action and reaction." In this sense, they are subtractive, non-directional and unintentional. In light of such ideas we can begin to see Oehlen's work as caught up in the indeterminancy of meaning, opening themselves to sensation and the parallel experience of intensity of engagement. They are 'meant' to affect on us, work on us and encourage us to develop expectations and experiences. There is nothing to 'know' about them, or if there is, this knowing about them can be delayed because it is not important to say whether these paintings are abstract or figurative or whatever ...

Massumi and Oehlen seem to be caught up with the same idea - that master narratives have foundered. They challenge the assumption, however, that the end of narrative leads to chaos. Instead, they posit the rise of 'affect', whereby events and actions become the rewards for enduring or engaging with something. Affect is no longer (exclusively) tied to language or language structures but to human actions, interactions and contact with things. Our very being here together, standing around the paintings and huddling up in the gallery space - I would like to suggest - is an event precipitated by language but augmented by contact and the onset of images, architecture, words, ideas ... the becoming of thought into language.

Our bodies in space, in the spaces worked upon by Oehlen and the Arnolfini (as venue) provided social contexts that can be infolded. The body, says Massumi, "infolds volitions and cognitions that are nothing if not situated." We are caught up in various centres of interminancy and it is us - through the act of human will or desire - that resolves to be determined and to find a way through this context. We will come away with meaning and, possibly, had expected to find some. However, had we expected to find each other, to get caught up in the spaces and contexts on offer, to have the intensities (and lack of intensities) that we have endured from moment to moment within this talk and in relation to this very specific set of relationships?

I would like to conclude by saying that free will - so crucial to the idealism of various human actions (from spying to painting to talking about art) - can now be (usefully) considered in terms of an attempt to organise and arrange social experiences within contexts. We find ourselves, even at this talk, at the centre of numerous indeterminancies, for which Oehlen's process-based works operate as a useful metaphor. Free will, according to Massumi, is giving in to, or responding to, events after they have started. This, for now, is my qualification - emotional or otherwise - of the work.

Link to Parables of the Virtual by Brian Massumi (extract provided by Amazon.com

THANKS FOR LISTENING.