Why "(t)here"?
What is named, or rather not named, but indicated, pointed to in this impossible "(t)here"? Which is to say, why "here" and/or "there", at the same time and alternatively? Would it mean to be "here" and "there" at the same time or is that, as we say, neither here nor there?We say that something is "neither here nor there" to mean that something does not matter.
. . . as if to matter, to be material, significant, important to us, something must be either here, with us, or there.
To say, in the most general way, that something exists we might say "there is . . .".
So why "(t)here"?This title imposed itself upon me (I resisted it for a long time), but came to be the most appropriate way of describing the space opened up by the works themselves in the way they relate first of all to their placement on walls, in corners or on floors.
I have often had to photograph my works in the studio, both for reference, but also for competition entries and the like.
It has become almost impossible for me to photograph my works in the accepted, normative way, the way paintings are reproduced in books, without frame, reduced to the mere reproducible image, without scale, without environment, without reflection.
The surfaces of my works make photography almost impossible. You always see yourself taking the photograph, they reflect other works, the sky, the walls, other viewers.
This is not something I aim for but it is not regrettable that they are difficult to convey in photographic reproduction: the sort of things that interest me are not JPEG-ready.
Now when I photograph my work I always try to include the floor, in particular the angle that the wall makes with the floor, both to imbue the image with something of a sense of scale and also in order to emphasise that we do not float before a painting, we do not magically materialise before a painting, least of all mine: we approach it, mostly on foot, we walk towards it to see it.
Our experience of most painting therefore involves some sort of placement on a floor, walking or standing upright, facing a wall on which a painting is placed.
Looking at a painting we stand "here" before it, where "here" names a certain patch of the floor that we occupy in order to see the painting there on the wall before us.
Where is "here"?
I took the photograph at the right underneath my neighbour's house where enough light came through the window shown to keep alive a small, proportionally related patch of ferns.
To me it still says, somehow, everything about my painted work and how I conceptualise it.
It is in some ways the effect I am after: I would prefer that a painting be thought of as a window or doorway onto what is outside than as a mirror.
When Gertrude Stein memorably said of Oakland (if I recall correctly) that there was no "there" there she articulated in a negative form exactly what I am after in my installation of works.
I want to evoke a strong sense of the "there" - I want to make a place, a place in the sense of some area, not necessarily well defined or bordered but not just empty space, space charged with some sort of intensity, some sort of qualitative difference from the void, however minimal.
For me the work, the painting there on the wall or in the corner or on the floor is above and before all else some way of making a place appear.
Every work of art, even those that appear to "say" little else, always says "here" or "there", in their brute presentation of something, themselves at first.
Even an empty gallery, like the "voids" of Yves Klein, at the very least, presents "something" even if that something is almost nothing.
An exhibition, that is a kind of spectacle directed entirely towards the presentation of something to someone, is always at the very least a way of saying "there" as in "there you go", "here look at this", "voila!".
So first of all "(t)here" is the name for the works themselves as a whole but in addition when you are there in the space, there with the works, there in that shared world the works and their viewers make, each of them effectively also says "here", as in "look here".
I have often told people that I paint nothing, I certainly do not make pictures of things or places but at all times things and places are reflected in my works: this reflection cannot be avoided so in effect my works change depending on where and how they are installed.
In addition the reflective surfaces of most of my work ensures that at all times the viewer can see the space in which they find themselves reflected in the surface of the work.
The viewer can see at all times what the work itself could "see" if it could see - including the viewer him or herself, other works, the outside, the passage of the sun through the day.
"Here" and "there" are the names of the most general definitions possible of space.
It seems that "here" is always, already "here" where I am, in the here and now.
Imagine yourself saying "here" to yourself while pointing to where "here" might be. Would you not point to your feet? or to your heart?
If you imagine then pointing from "here" to "there" where is "there"?
What is indicated as "there" is always at least at arm's length away, it's always over there or out there. I imagine your hand moving out from your heart to an arm's length away, in an expansive curvilinear gesture like the sign language for love.
What horizon is being marked out (t)here?
Is the "there" the same "there" as in "there is . . ."?
A painting is always somehow "there" in the sense of "over there" even if we, here and now, momentarily share the space it inhabits with it, we can move close to it, approach it from a distance but it always remains there where we are then.
My work situates itself in a mobile and changing threefold relation between situated work, specific space and mobile viewer.
This is the real "subject matter" of my work and it is one reason why I think of myself as an installation artist who uses painting rather than simply a painter.
My works are not just pictures of nothing, they aim to make the viewer aware of the radius of their vision, its necessary anamorphosis and perspective, in short these works aim for a kind of proprioception of the conditions of viewing themselves.
Does it matter that I also think of my work as one long love song to light?
