Words seem to circle around meaning, incapable of taking the last step towards it. Instead they feel the constant pressure of meaning that sometimes lends them forms that allow them to get reunited with the content.
If we want to convey what is important, in the sense of values rather than data, the first question that arises is usually how to do that without losing what’s essential. An obscure game is continuously unfolding between what was said, and how it was said. These contradictions define whether the ideas that have to be solved periodically in language would be preserved. Written word, meanwhile, is rapidly losing weight due to the ceaseless expansion of the field of speech. Internet publications form labyrinthine shimmering of meanings, placing them under serious suspicion. Meanings escape, and words no longer relate to them. Meanings begin to appear altogether optional, or even outright nonexistent. Some sort of homogenous morass is formed, and any system of coordinates sinks into it, rendering collisions impossible. Writing used to legitimize the spoken word, in a way; now it’s more of a promulgation of a multitude of words. Plot trumps quality, which languishes as a stylistic garnish, superficial aesthetization. This metamorphosis does away with meaning, which, in essence, is language. Ever more often, the notion of quality gets replaced with professionalism, predictable and manageable. Meanwhile the road towards understanding quality contains many mysteries, since it’s the very lack of understanding “how it’s made” is what defines an artwork for me. How does one create the universal optics of art that focuses on the human in humankind?
The fundamental mistake of the new criticism lies in striking a deal with the totalitarian principle of subdividing an artwork into form and content. Art is usually judged from the perspective of its contents or formal components, although it is obvious that the wrong form may negate all good intentions, leaving behind a mere semblance of meaning. It follows that a meaningful plot cannot be judged as a separate merit that justifies the artist’s utterance. Words seem to circle around meaning, incapable of taking the last step towards it. Instead they feel the constant pressure of meaning that sometimes lends them forms that allow them to get reunited with the content.
While working, I focused on conditions that make language possible, as well as the factors that imperil or hinder it. By mixing writing with painting, I brought painting back to its literal essence, the principle that breathes life into language and turns it into “live writing.” An inscription serves as a boundary between an image and a narrative, existing in both fields at once. This perspective makes visible how abstract paintings carry meanings.
Artworks are expected to contain something like a complete system. Yukio Mishima wrote that his favorite book, a detailed guide to various aspects of a samurai’s life, entitled Hagakure, was full of contradictions. It is likely that it was this very feature, which might be seen as a drawback in this unique and extensive treatise, that Mishima saw as a factor that enabled it to carry and convey important values without exhausting them through literal interpretations. Words conserve meanings or demonstrate their presence in messages that are sometimes treated as accidental hints or signs of confusion. Another reason why a correct statement may take the form of confusion or even despair lies in the fact that the inner message of what is said is retained and conveyed under the conditions when the language’s main focus carries an internal contradiction, speech seems incorrect, and there’s a singular resolve to destroy the constructed structure the moment it approaches completion. The unspeakable shines through precisely this ambiguous, shifting and muddled speech; and the unspeakable, which may initially seem like the absence of language, engenders extraordinary precision whence stream values. Conflicts between visible meanings are transformed into a canon as a contrapuntal form (as described by Edward Said in Humanism and Democratic Criticism), where polyphonic sound produces meanings that transform an act into a work.
Artist’s work is always exposed to language and has to engage with it. Obviously, it, too, is a language, exposed to itself. According to Beuys, in a way, what is written transforms into a drawing. In keeping with this accurate remark, I drew words, thus shaking their conventional meanings loose, so that inscriptions would be left to face their form time and time again. Something similar happens to the sound of a voice in song, when words become hard decipher not only because of specific pronunciation, but also because their quotidian meaning becomes irrelevant. In musical language, a phrase is turned inside out, pulling itself towards the light. In musical sounds, words are converted into meanings through divorcing them from their verbal shell and abstracting them from the plot they seem to be firmly enmeshed in.
It is my firm belief that abstract speech is entrenched in the logic of meaning and capable of conveying meanings without losses like no other type of speech. A collision that legitimizes speech as a connection between being and existence has to occur within an utterance, and human beings are this connection. Taras Vozniak wrote that “existence in a human being imperils the human being as such,” that is, “a human being imperils itself.” Given this risk, the theme behind the artist’s intention is usually seen as a lifeline the drowning will cling to in order to stay afloat rephraseable meanings, instead of sinking into the depths of the unspeakable.
It was important for me to focus on the very duration of writing, on the processuality of in-progress as growth or surfacing, when an inscription reveals itself in its fluidity. I focused on an inscription as an incomplete action to understand how a word feels when it’s being spoken. In essence, observing the development of my own work on the project, I charted a route between the two hidden points: the conception and the realization. What lies between the two points is known as the process of the artist’s work. Therefore, I began to follow the vulnerable progression of thought along the most dangerous stretch, where it’s left defenseless out in the open as it is formed. If the initial theme of the artist’s work is mysterious because of its abstract and unreal nature, the decision to complete it stems from the understanding that a work is plunging back into mystery.
Volodymyr Budnikov
Kaniv – Kyiv, August – September 2019
*The project was supported by ChervoneChorne Art Group