Allegorical Flatness Painting

ALLEGORICAL FLATNESS PAINTING
A Solo Exhibition by Ito Joyoatmojo

Talking about flatness in contemporary painting practice obviously feels awkward and absurd. The contemporary painting has shown its function as a representation media, has it not? The canvas surface of painting in the contemporary art era is loaded with many narration and problems from outside the art region. The contemporary art no longer has any interest in questioning itself. The defenders of modern formalist painting have accused representational paint as displaying “art” through a “non art” subject matter, while underlining that abstract shows “art” through “art”. What they meant was that by displaying merely the basic component of visual art: line, shape, form; the art will not be contaminated by the existence of subject matters from outside the art region. This is what we recognized as abstract painting. According to Clement Greenberg, it is only through abstract paintings that paintings can show their true form, which is its flatness,

“Flatness alone was unique and exclusive to that art….Flatness, two-dimensionality, was the only condition painting shared with no other art, and so modernist painting oriented itself to flatness as it did to nothing else.”[1]

We now knew that the glory of formalistic modernists with its abstract paintings has crumbled to dust. Although the contemporary painting practices has shown a more diverse display, it can be said that painting has dominantly become more representational. More than the paintings of the past, the contemporary painting has become a field of joy for the celebration of images. Despite the myriad of faces, as the visual text with representational nature, the realist approach has grown dominant once more. Thus, the paintings of Ito in this exhibition are showing photo-realistic images. Anyone who sees the paintings can easily see that the subject matters are grass and bikes. This is indeed as plain as an elephant in front of your eyes. However, what exactly does Ito represents through the subject matter of patch of grass, bushes and groups of bikes?

One has to admit that facing Ito’s paintings, one will be fascinated by how similar the paintings look compared to the real patch of grass, or in this case, a photograph of a patch of grass. However, the simplicity of the subject matter puts one in a difficult position when asked, just what exactly does the artist want to represent? What is the meaning that we can extract from a patch of grass? Obviously, we can always try to reproduce meanings from a visual text. However, a patch of grass is too “simple” an image to trigger a construction for a meaning, is it not? We can suspect Ito for deliberately invites us to be able to directly construct meanings from his patch of grass. Usually, the photo-realistic paintings in contemporary art practice puts forth content and meaning that can be deducted from the subject matter existence. If that is so, what is the meaning of grasses in Ito’s paintings? I doubt that we can instantly see the “story” and “meaning” from Ito’s paintings.

Ito Joyoatmojo offers “empty” paintings, with no content whatsoever, although one can still find subject matters on the canvas. Thus, one can say that Ito deliberately chose grass as his subject matter because of his “emptiness of meaning”. These grasses and bushes with their frontal representation has been his subject matter for quite sometimes. Thus, what he chose to show through his subject matter of grass can actually be implied in relation to his thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions of culture and art, which obviously is the result of his life experiences. Thus, one can say that Ito’s works represent his personal identity issues.

The title of this exhibition is Allegorical Flatness Painting. It means that Ito’s painting is positioned in the discourse of flatness in the journey of modern and contemporary art. “The absence” of meaning in the grass paintings can also be related to the absence of “depth” offered to the audience for content and meaning. The flatness of Ito’s painting in contemporary art context can instantly be connected to the contemporary condition of culture, which is shallow and superficial. Therefore, at first Ito’s paintings can be called an allegory for the shallow contemporary culture. Then, his paintings can be seen as an allegory for the “shallowness” of art who had believed at its existence as a deep pool. This can be seen in the statement of the often mentioned the end of art who believes that art is over and what is left is only its celebrations, or to be more precise the celebration of its “shallowness”. However, contemporary art can still, in its practice and discourse, be a place that accommodates the many problems, stated by the artist. Although Ito’s works are also referring to the cultural condition and art that he saw and ponder, his works are also the reflection of his identity.

As is common for the Indonesian people¬¬—or anyone who has been separated for a long time from its country—who has spent his life in Europe, the problem of identity, or identity crisis, is an important issue. Ito has long worked as graphic designer in Swiss, for more than 20 years. He has returned to practice painting for a couple of years now. As is common to artists, the problem of personal identity is an important issue. We can assume that as an artist Ito spend more time pondering and questioning his identity. Andrew Edgar referring to the thoughts of Erik Erikson noted this about identity crisis,

“At first the term referred to a person who had lost sense of ‘personal sameness and historical continuity’ (Erikson 1968: 22). As such, the individual is separated from the culture that can give coherence to his or her sense of self.”[2] (Cultural Theory, hal. 186).

The problem of has also always related to race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. In this case, what instantly hit Ito as a Javanese in Swiss is obviously the gap of cultures based on ethnicity and nationality. However, in other point of view the field of contemporary art is not a field, which can “clearly” answer the problems of identity. Often times the contemporary art is merely a field where this problem are represented and displayed but serve no answer. After his comeback into art in its contemporary context, Ito soon felt and saw that the place he had returned to (the contemporary art) is also a field that has been experiencing acute crisis related to its identity. We can never be sure of the meanings and identity of contemporary art, can we? If this is so, it is easy to see that Ito also had his doubts on the possibility and effectiveness of contemporary art, or in this case paintings, as the tool or instrument in answering the problems of identity.

I assume this problem had grown more clearly in his consciousness when he tried to seek “another possibility” and entering the contemporary art in Indonesia. Aside from the “content” or “narration” offered by the contemporary artists, the problem of value, meaning, and methods of art are obviously mostly imported—unknowingly/unconsciously—from the West. Often times, the problems lies not in the paradigm or the contemporary art thinking which is mainly constructed by the Western artworld—which seems to be the model of global contemporary artworld—but in the reality of taken for granted attitude of Indonesian contemporary artists who thinks that contemporary art is valuable—without the ability to explain why. What can one do? The contemporary art in Indonesia, which is actually a cultural appropriation of its Western part, obviously serve no answer to Ito’s anxiety on his identity and art itself. Therefore, the only way left is to empty oneself and freeing oneself from contemporary art, not by leaving it but by diving into and subverting it from the inside. That is why Ito emptied his self from any possibility of expressing emotion or constructing meaning. One can say that philosophically Ito’s works are anti-meaning works, and by itself can also be said to be anti-art. It can be said as a passive subversion. He made paintings, while denying “hope” and “believe” about their representational ability as a critical field.

Obviously, Ito’s works turned out to be “meaningful” and “critical”, through his way of denying the stereotype of contemporary painting. The same case goes into his works being intentional because it has no intention. That is why the flatness in Ito’s works are different from the concept of flatness in the Early Modern pieces, such as Matisse’s works which reduces form into flat patterns, or the flatness of Jackson Pollock which completely nullify the pictorial aspect to get into the true flatness of paintings as two dimensional works.

“From Manet to Stelaa. Modernist painting has progressively surrendered to the resistance of its medium, to the point where very little was left beside its flatness itself.”[3]

However, what Greenberg promoted about the flatness as the essence of painting, is also accompanied by the important existence of Jackson Pollock. The gestural—drip—paintings of Pollock become important because the paintings are the product of his bodily gesture while splish-splashing and dripping the paint on the canvas, do they not? It means that what was recorded is the “emotional depth” of Pollock. David Joselit referred to Pollock’s paintings as the allegorical dimension of depth in Abstract Expressionism,

“This allegory arises from the conviction, shared equally by Pollock and his critics. That gestural painting emerges from an inner source—a psychological depth. Pollock’s interest in the unconscious is well documented, as his assertion, in a statement of 1951, that ‘the method of painting is the natural growth out of need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.”[4]

What Ito’s works and the choice of working represent is the flatness aspect, which is closer to the metaphor of the shallowness condition of culture, some kind of a negation to the dominant culture, just like the one showed by Frederic Jameson,

“A new kind of flatness or depthlesness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense (is) perhaps the supreme formal feature of all postmodernism to which will have occasion to return….”[5]

In other words, the concept of flatness in art and contemporary painting is not merely related to the physical and optical of art, just as David Joselit said further,

“There is a great deal at stake in acknowledging that the flatness or depthlessness we experiences in our globalized world is more than optical effect.”[6]

The idea that nowadays the flatness aspect cannot merely be connected to the flatness of non-representational painting, and the realization that the representational painting cannot bear any fruit in answering and understanding the problems of society and culture, drove Ito to move between these two possibilities. That is why; he can easily talk about flatness through the language of realist painting. While emotion and expression are almost invisible in the Ito’s paintings, the coldness shown by the paintings represents the shallowness and artificiality aspect of the culture. Theoretically and logically, every representational painting that tried to represent the contemporary humane condition is instantly trapped by the shallowness of contemporary culture. Because what the painting represents is shallow culture, then, as its consequence, what is represented is the shallowness itself. That is why Ito refuses the notion that his grass works directly represents a condition in the context of society and culture.

The flatness—and in accordance shallowness—of contemporary culture that Ito tries to simulate through his paintings reminds us to the concept of superflatness from the contemporary Japanese artist Murakami. Through the concept of flatness, the works from Murakami represent the shallowness and childishness of popular culture and the flatness of social structure in Japan.[7] That is why Murakami appropriates the popular culture like crazy. Simply put, Murakami’s superflat has this meaning,

“The term is used by Murakami to refer to various flattened form in Japanese graphic art, animation, pop culture and fine art, as well as the ‘shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture.”[8]

Ito did not choose to represent the tome of popular culture. Ito chose grass because he wants to try avoiding the trap of “subject matter” which is so pretentious and “strong”. According to him, he chose grass because it enables him to paint this subject matter in a monotone and orderly rhythm, without having to do it in an exact and definite tick-tocks. Painting a field of grass enables him to work in a rhythmic and monotone way, continuously, like a machine. Thus, the grass subject matter, in essence and in its process does represent emptiness and flatness.

The issue of working process is the prominent issue in Ito’s works, at least for the artist himself. If Andy Warhol bragged about his producing painting in the “machine” way, which is by using screen print, then Ito does more than that. He made himself a machine by working in a highly methodic way. By applying the CMYK methods of printing, Ito puts layer upon layer in a discipline rhythm of work. Ito does work like a printer, without emotion, without the need to change. Ito is a “MANual printer”. Ito does “reprint” photographical image. This is a further underlining in the aspect of optical flatness in Ito’s painting. Is it not the photo image, which is naturally a flat plane, which he paints?

To further strengthen the issue of “value”, the consciousness or critic that Ito wants to say, what David Joselit said might be of help,

“There is a great deal at stake in acknowledging that flatness or depthlessness we experiences in our globalized world is more than optical effect. I will argue that flatness may serve as a powerful metaphor for the price we pay in transforming ourselves into images—a compulsory self-spectacularization which is the necessary condition of entering the public sphere in the world of late capitalism.”[9]

However, Ito do not want this flatness to be an issue that can only be deducted from the assumptions of the content and emotional “emptiness” of his paintings, but also recorded in his canvas and recorded optically. One must admit that facing Ito’s painting, one is reminded to the “window of illusion”. One seems to stare at grasses or bushes outside the window. There is a spatial impression made by grasses in the lower part of canvas into the upper part. However, the absence of horizon in Ito’s painting seems also to deny that depth, so that what appears is an invitation to the flatness of the field of grass. Staring at Ito’s painting, especially the “grass” works, seems to be an invitation to look down, bowing our head, and staring at the (surface) of the earth. This can also be a symbolic invitation or offer from the artist.

Ito had once said this regarding his past exhibition about time,

“My observation of ‘time’ as phenomena resulted to the product and led me to detach myself from the demand for an end result of the dynamic process. By emphasizing the dynamic, the product loses its significance …”

What Ito said is clearly shown in the works in this exhibition. Ito paintings seems to be a collage of print materials, fulfilling the surface of his canvas. With his own way, we can say that Ito is requestioning the identity and the possibility of painting. How far can painting in the context of contemporary art justify its existence and identity? Is it only a matter of medium? Is it the materials: the canvas and paint? Is it still possible to see painting ontologically? In the end, one must admit that Ito’s intention to abandon content and meaning is the main content of his works. This can also be seen as an effort of critic, or his self-critic to his art journey, and the contemporary painting practices. I had said that Ito stand between the self-criticizing modernist principles and the contemporary art who preoccupied itself with criticizing the world outside the art. On this matter, what Clement Greenberg said is worthy to be observed,

“I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant…The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself—not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.”[10]

Asmudjo Jono Irianto
Exhibition curator

Notes:
[1] Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999, p. 207.
[2] Andrew Edgar, Cultural Theory, The key Concepts, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 186
[3] Op,Cit, p. 216.
[4] David Joselit, “Note on Surface, Toward a Genealogy of Flatness”, in Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, editor: Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 295.
[5] Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham; Duke University Press, 1991, p. 9.
[6] Op.Cit, p. 293.
[7] Midori Matsui, “Murakami Matrix: Takashi Murakami’s Instrumentalization of Japanese Postmodern Culture” in Murakami editor Paul Schimmel, New York: Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd, 2008, p. 84.
[8] www.wikipedia.org/wiki/superflat.
[9] Op. Cit., David Joselit, p. 293.
[10] Op.Cit., Thierry de Duve, p, 207.

Start Time: Friday, September 4, 2009 at 7:00pm
End Time: Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 8:00pm
Location: SIGIarts Gallery
Street: Jl. Mahakam I no. 11 Kebayoran Baru Jakarta, Indonesia
Phone: 62217260949
Email: sigi.arts@gmail.com