|
since late 1987 stephen bram has been working on a specialised project. making works, paintings mostly, but also drawings, wall paintings, architecture, installation, neon lights and film which refer to two, sometimes three, points in space. the positions of these points are chosen carefully in relation to the works, but randomly in relation to the world at large. they are usually outside the nominal boundaries of the work, and sometimes located outside the rooms in which the work is installed. although part of the theme of this project concerns the (perspectival) method by which the work refers and the implications of this method, the overriding intention of the work is to repeatedly present and stage a specific relationship between the work and the world. the work is geometric, formal. but at the same time refers outside itself, to the world which formalism disbars. the work contains no subject matter or specific reference. every work uses the same method and presents the same relationships. with this method, the work refers indexically, by indication, just as a pointing finger does. the reference the work makes is a matter of fact. the referents of each work, although specific, have no identity, no qualities or characteristics which could differentiate them from infinitely many other referents. so, on the one hand, the work is not about nothing, or about itself, as some artists claim of their work, and as critics of formalism claim of abstraction generally. on the other hand it deliberately avoids being about anything specific. its referent is not (itself) of interest. it is not possible for it to be of interest; it has no identity. the work is about “being about”. all of the possible thought, and feeling, all the possible value of the meanings evacuated from the work, by its renunciation of any specific reference is directed to the (otherwise inaccessible) phenomena of meaning, and the processes of its attribution, themselves. |