POINT BLANK BY IZADDIN MATRAHAH & AZNAN OMAR


Erroneous views of the nature of the act of expression almost all have their source in the notion that an emotion is complete in itself within only when uttered having impact upon external material.  But, in fact, an emotion is to or from or about something objective, whether in fact or in idea.  An emotion is implicated in a situation, the issue of which is in suspense and in which the self that is moved in the emotion is vitally concerned.  Situations are depressing, threatening, intolerable, triumphant or anything that can be understood save as an interpretation of self with objective conditions.

This latter fact is especially important in connection with the individualization of works of art.  The notion that expression is a direct emission of an emotion complete in itself entails logically that individualization is specious and external.   For according to it, fear is fear, elation is elation, love is love, each being generic, and internally differentiated only by differences of intensity.  Were this idea is correct or not, works of art would necessarily fall within certain types.  This view has infected criticism but not so as to assist understanding of concrete works of art.   A lifetime would be too short to reproduce in words a single emotion.  In reality, however, poet and novelist have an immense advantage over even an expert psychologist in dealing with an emotion.  Instead of a description of an emotion in intellectual and symbolic terms, the artist “does the deed that breeds” the emotion.

If one examines the reason why certain works of art offend us, one is likely to find that the cause is that there is no personally felt emotion guiding the selecting and assembling of the materials presented.  We derive the impression that the artist, say the author of a novel, is trying to regulate by conscious intent the nature of the emotion aroused.  Irritated by a feeling that he/she is manipulating materials to secure an effect decided upon in advance.  The facets of the work, the variety so indispensable to it, are held together by some external force.  The movement of the parts and the conclusion disclose no logical necessity.  The author, not the subject matter, is the arbiter.

According to Vernon Lee, as well as to some other theorists in the field of aesthetics, “art” signifies a group of activities that are, respectively, recording, constructive, logical and communicative.  There is nothing aesthetic about art itself.  The products of these arts become aesthetic “in response to a totally different desire having its own reasons, standard, imperative”.  This desire arises because of the need for satisfaction of congruous relations among our modes of motor imagery.   The demand for lines is satisfied when or motor imagery reenacts the relations embodied in an object – as, for example, the habitual properties of lines cannot be got rid of even in an experiment that endeavours to isolate the experience  of lines from everything else.  These properties are resonances of a multitude of experiences in which, in our concern with objects, we are not even aware of lines as such.  Different lines and different relations of lines have become subconsciously charged with all the values that result from what they have done in our experience on our every contact with the world about us.

In this exhibition the four of us is trying to manifests certain kind of ideas which mediated subcultural forms and displaces proletarian ones which is still useful; as Craig Owens has noted is a simulacrum of bohemia.  This “avant garde”, which consists of a heterogeneous group of media centric, graffiti – cum – painter artist, neoexpressionists and neosurrealist trying make our certain artistic ventures denoting the subcultural, politically motivated or plainly as an unnamed group or as we call ourselves the “Pensyarah-pensyarah Seni UiTM Perak”, in fulfilling this invitation by the House of Matahati (HOM) is a challenge for us as a group of academician in this decade of advanced-capitalist, post modernist present.

Indeed it seems that we are today more or less spontaneously inclined to interpret everything that does not obviously fall within a conventional code of communication, by adding it to the “account” of artistic expression, which itself has to take on the (superfluous) ornamental eccentricities and the anomalies of forms of discourse and conventional perceptions.  What we found important is this conception of the “image” which now dominates all contemporary conceptions of artistic productions.  Academician reigns as universal and absolute master when it is based both on its laws and their opposites.  This is essentially where the law of the art market operates as the ideology of modern art and of that other invention which calls itself the “post-modern”.

A certain number of painters are conscious of these stakes on the life of their art, in that their art is a statement which cannot become anything but itself (whether it’s a picture or work of art); a statement only worth something as a statement; a presentation, meeting, field of relations, an opening, a simple gesture that does not assert any more than it denies, but that adds itself to the code, to the normative series that it consequently opens by excess.  When interviewed with Art Review, Thomas Hirschhorn talked about his work “Hotel Democracy” said the following:  “Freedom is what I am fighting for, and you only get freedom when you are fighting for it”.  At the time, that sounded glamorous and really cool.  Like he was a proper Che Guevara about to overthrow a corrupt and wicked Western democracy, while also demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the works of Karl Marx, in an age when “protest” and “fighting for freedom” seemed mainly to mean being Kurt Cobain drugged up to the eyeballs and blowing his brains out mid moan.  That as much as Thomas’s work is about the things he believes in, it’s also a provocation for viewers to outshout him about the things they really care about.  In that way they’re acts of generosity.

And perhaps as in any other artworks, once you get beyond the bombastic first encounter, they don’t really function to force you to think what the artist thinks; rather, they force you to fight them.  To try and match the artist’s passion and ego.  To try and think for yourself.  Whereas a point has been made or just another point blank situation. 

Artworks

Hooked in Mouth
Acrylic on canvas | 152.2 x 122cm | 2009
RM 6,000


Kafkasque (The Trial)
2Acrylic on canvas | 152.2 x 122cm | 2009
RM 6,000


Homage to Cezanne
Acrylic , graphite on canvas | 122 x 122cm | 2009
RM 5,000


Hooray Kurosawa
Acrylic, graphite on jute | 182 x 152cm | 2009
RM 8,000


Soul to Squeeze
Acrylic, oil, collage on canvas | 81.5 x 111cm |2009
RM 3,000


The Red Shoe
Acrylic, oil, collage on canvas | 81.5 x 111cm | 2009
RM 3,000


The Challenger Chapter I Page I
Mixed media on canvas | 122 x 91.5cm | 2009
RM 7,500


The Challenger Chapter I Page II
Mixed media on canvas | 122 x 91.5cm | 2009
RM 7,500


The Challenger Chapter I Page III
Mixed media on canvas | 122 x 91.5cm | 2009
RM 7,500


Ikan Di Laut Asam Di Darat
 Aluminium | 45 x 45 x 22cm | 2009
RM 4,000


Ikan Tongkol
Aluminium | 44 x 50 x 7cm | 2009
RM 5,000


Good Morning Towel
Aluminium | 65 x 35 x 10cm | 2009
RM 5,000


Ali Baba Perut Kuali
 Aluminium | 70 x 80 x 15cm | 2009
RM 8,000


D24
 Aluminium | 56 x 53 x 11cm | 2009
RM 6,000


H1N1 Victim
Aluminium | 20 x 56 x 14cm | 2009
RM 3,000


Pak Teddy
Aluminium | 37 x 60 x 15cm | 2009
RM 7,000


Three Drops
Aluminium | 20 x 50 x 5cm, 20 x 40 x 6cm,
25 x 36 x 8cm (3 Panels) | 2009
RM 6,000