INDEX OF SIGNS: The Paintings and Objects of IRMAN A. RAHMAN
APRIL 13 - MAY 4, 2005
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA
Index of Signs,
The Paintings and Objects of Irman A. Rahman
By Rizki A. Zaelani
"Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made."
(I try to act in that gap between the two)
Robert Rauschenberg 1
1. Finding the Abstract Painting
Defender of abstract art, the British aesthetician Clive Bell, once explained: "Art," he postulates, "is a matter of stating a significant form; a kind of combinations of various plastic elements (such as: lines, planes, mass, colours) that are able to move our consciousness in aesthetic ways"2. Discussions about art, therefore, will be simultaneously linked with discussions on someone's awareness in understanding matters of art. Dramatically Bell explains, to appreciate an art work, we do not need to take anything from our life experiences, including our knowledge about various ideas, stories, or matters of life; it is not even about the similarity with the myriad feelings or emotions that we often feel in our daily life. Such segregation is a matter of consciousness. The consciousness is imagined to form a distinct experience, which will bring us not only to our understanding about the "expression of art", but also to the "true" matters of art. That way, "art will move us from the world of man's activities, to the world of aesthetic exaltation"3. It can very well be that Bell is being excessive in "appreciating" the way we perceive an artwork. In practice, the matter of how we appreciate an artwork is inseparable from how we appreciate life. Therefore a note must be stated, here, that the understanding of "not carrying anything from our life experiences" which Bell had meant is not necessarily the same with "not carrying anything about our life experiences." "Paintings are (precisely) related with matters of life and simultaneously also with matters of art; it is impossible to create a painting merely by choosing one of these matters. I act in the gap between the two matters," says the American artist Robert Rauschenberg, a year after Bell stated his beliefs.
2. Signs/Symbols in the Painting
Bringing Rauschenberg's attitude to our mind, the works of Irman A Rahman seem to lay before us, the spectators, a kind of distance, so that the works can seemingly be separated from the myriad stories or feelings that we usually experience day to day. The works indeed appear to want to deny the emergence of images about actual experiences from our lives; this, however, does not mean that the works are separated from experiences about our life. In general, Irman's paintings betray a tension in the imagery on the canvasses. A part of his canvass is often be left seemingly "empty", while the other part is filled with various certain shapes that arise from the meetings of the spanned lines. Indeed, Irman tends to span horizontal lines so that the plane of the canvass seems to be widening. On these horizontal planes we are able to find "strange" spaces, formed because of the sandwiching of several thin planes that come with different intensities of colours. Sometimes the sandwiching even shows a kind of shadows of vague planar forms. In general, the colours used in Irman's paintings are also "rare", and even show monochromatic shades. There is a kind of focused intensity that will be demonstrated here.
On the planes of the canvasses, we can obviously see the various "letters" or "numbers", with myriad sizes and appearances, and sometimes they seem to form a kind of sentences in a paragraph. About the alphabets and the numbers, some of them can be directly recognized - albeit seemingly strange - and some are difficult to make out. Some of the alphabets come from the topography of Chinese or Japanese alphabets. Besides the two sets of alphabets, there are shapes that are truly difficult to recognize. These certain letters, numbers, or shapes are not directly betraying any meaning, indeed. For now, we can perceive them in their meaning as signs. We must verify them. "Signs are a two-faced psychological entity, consisting of a signifier/signifiant that are in the form of images/shapes or sounds, and the element of the signified/signifie that means our mental concept about the signs. (In the general usage) signs are often be thought of as equal with the usage of the term 'symbols'." 4. In our daily life, we are used to, and often, experiencing myriad of signs, from the signs of languages (as in the alphabets and numbers) up to images; from the symbol of religion to the signs of traffic; from the photographic images to films; we even understand gestures in the body language. Signs are familiar matters in our daily life. Basically, all cultural symptoms that appear or possess physical forms can be understood and made a "sign" for certain purposes, as long as the sign can be understood by other parties who also experience that sign. There is a clear instance; a sign will show another matter outside itself 5. To comprehend certain signs, someone will consider certain situations (which he or she is experiencing) to determine their meanings. There are many situations that can differentiate the instances of a person's perceiving certain signs in specific ways: understanding certain colours as traffic signs will naturally be different from the way someone thinks of the colours of the things he or she is going to buy in a store. Therefore, understanding signs are indeed related to a kind of certain and characteristic system of signification, and related also to the situations of the experiences of a person who is going to interpret them - culturally, socially, or personally.
Signs (alphabets and numbers) in the works of Irman A Rahman, which we are observing at the moment, betray a characteristic situation of signification: a kind of signification mechanism in a work of art (painting), which will seemingly "separate itself" from the matters of alphabets or numbers that we usually find in our daily lives. Naturally, there are purposes in showing and placing signs in such a way. In general, the appearance of the various alphabets and numbers to the forms of "paragraphs" - as parts demonstrating themselves - are a result of composition in the principles of collage. The strategy of a collage - placing/situating/stacking as a unity the myriad of shapes that are seemingly foreign to one another - contain the principle: to adopt the various elements of the work, certain objects, or the many existing messages, and integrate them all into a new creation (work) so that they result in an "original totality" stating the manifestation of the various disruptions from the several categories (things, symptoms) with general characters 6. In the practice of art, the strategy of collage to show various "matters foreign to one another" is considered successful, not only because it has formulated a unified matter; but also the strategy simultaneously shows the continuation of the various differing foreign conditions into a new matter. Therefore, the collage strategy is basically also an effort to move the context of a material - which in practice is present in the various differences - each into another context, different from the original condition 7.
It is thus so. Several alphabets, numbers, or paragraphs of sentences in Irman's paintings, indeed, not directly conjure certain meanings in our mind. Each of them, as in the case of the "unidentified forms of images" that he has made, is situated/placed simultaneously for another context and purpose - without our having to be acting as if we have forgotten the meaning and shapes of "P", "a", "c", "D", "1", or "5" which we have known before. It is here that we can reach the consequence of the collage strategy as a pattern of "quotation" (a term better known in linguistics). In fact, each sign, linguistic or non-linguistic (as in the case of an image), in its form small or great, can be proclaimed as a quotation, and the sign can thus be separated from each of the context previously given to them, in order to enter a new and unlimited context. The collage strategy indeed states the probability of its function to "disrupt", in a certain phase, "the desire to say what one means" about something in the manifestation of its original form. The collage strategy also cuts the participation of (that) person in understanding certain signs in their limiting context, which carry the person away in their seemingly fixed meanings 8. Irman's way of placing the various alphabets, numbers, or paragraphs (sentences) in the tensions of planes, colours, and shapes as the collage strategy, invites us to move away from the fixation of certain significations (of alphabets, numbers, sentences) that serve to confine us. The various signs placed in the collage strategy are not meant to be "changed" in terms of their meaning, but rather be "moved", put forward, directed to the other context.
The meaning of such removal has to do with the development of Irman A Rahman's works - included the works that he has created before he prepares this exhibition. For quite a long time, Irman has been intensely observing the various quality of a thing's surface and character - metals, stones, glasses, etc - which are actually general things that we encounter every day. It is not sufficient for Irman to gaze on the various characters or qualities of the surfaces of the things; rather, he often feels that he has to be involved. It is Irman's "involvement" in the visual quality that continues on. Irman does not feel that it is sufficient for him to make the surface quality of things as a source of ideas to create works, but also consider them as continually proposing questions or problems about various matters in themselves. Now Irman is involved in the qualities of matters that simultaneously contain the matters of alphabets and numbers he sees in wooden containers. Wooden containers, no matter how others perceive them, are truly special for Irman. In the surfaces of the containers, Irman not only finds the quality of the stacking of colours (brown) of the woods that he admires, or the "tension" of the overlapping lines of wood grains; he also finds meanings in the containers' existential characters.
In Irman's observation, the containers are made, prepared, and then given signs (numbers and/or alphabets) so that they function as giving protection for the things placed within these containers. After the content has been moved from one location to another, the container will undergo another phase of its function. The container can be used again to move another "content" (things), but it will certainly carry another signs (which can be different from the meaning of its original signs). Or, the container will be damaged, sorted, and arranged again as wooden planes for another purpose (made into furniture, or other things). In Irman's perception, wooden containers with the quality of the appearance of their colours and shapes, and the information on the various alphabets and numbers they possess, existentially never own a fixed meaning in themselves. The wooden containers are meaningful for something (the content) they carry within them, something they protect. Therefore, the wooden containers seemingly possess a character of a "sign/symbol"; they are meaningful because they direct us to something outside themselves - which are ironically placed "within" them.
3. Sign Index
The choice of the surface of the wooden containers as the trigger for Irman's works in this exhibition indeed betrays the continuation of Irman's efforts that he has done in the creation of his previous works. Previously, Irman has been interested in delving into the sensitivity of the characters of metallic material. On his canvasses, he often puts concrete found objects "against each other" - objects that sometimes no longer show any distinct shape, ones that people consider as no longer useful. On his paintings, Irman sometimes also inserts among the concrete objects certain alphabets or numbers. He does all that with the purpose of avoiding the possible significations of the objects or figures that he has collided. Irman, however, still sees a meaning there. He often views the alphabets or numbers as "discarded objects", objects that are let go after seemingly being comprehended.
Irman's works in this exhibition moves from the theme of "being discarded" to the theme of "the shifts" (of meanings). Considering their shapes and functions, alphabets or numbers on the surface of the wooden containers indeed serve as signs that simultaneously betray their relations in a physical way. The forms and all the signs on the surface of the wooden containers clearly show the human's intentions and effort to prepare them in order to meet certain purpose or goal (as a place or container to protect and move something). In general, the boxes and the various information on them are also a kind of signs. As a "sign", the wooden containers demonstrate a specific kind, one that is called as the "index". In linguistics study, an index is a sign/symbol that carries a meaning because it shows a form of physical relations with what it refers to. Index is a footprint of cause-and-effect instances/certain physical events, and therefore an index will show the object/signs which it signifies (for example, "smoke" is the index sign for "fire" 9. What, then, does Irman want to show: placing and equating his paintings with wooden containers in their concrete manifestations, simultaneously?
I think, most importantly Irman is demonstrating the matter of "picturesque power" in his works. Irman shows this power in its concrete manifestation (as a thing/a box) and in its abstract character (as a painting). Here, we are facing with something that are stated as a visual experience, and simultaneously reminded of our physical experience with the thing (the box). To Irman, both are acting as the problematic of signs and signifying process. Irman aggressively positions both experiences in chorus before us. In certain works, he even shows and directs the signs of physical relations toward the new area of signification (as in the case of the bathtub works and the wooden containers). Therefore, Irman not only delves into the matter of "sign index" - for me, he even desires to find the problematic of "sign index". Irman not only wants to delve into the various physical footprints that are the originator of the signs for and in his works; he furthermore also wants to open the possibility of the "birth" of certain physical causes/effects which precisely originate from his meetings with signs.
In the case of such creative strategy, Irman's works can be considered as a part of the effort to show the matter of "shifter" signs. "Shifter" here is the term used by the language researcher Roman Jakobson to explain the category of linguistic sign that is "full with its meanings" precisely because the sign has a character of being "meaningless" - for example the word sign of "I", "you", or "thee". Consider the instance when two persons communicating, using the same words, "I" and "you" to show, explain, or mean their differing selves (the "he" or "she" or the "conversing partner") 10. Both of them will feel comfortable, understand each other, and interact, albeit using the same words referring to someone/something indeterminately. So it is thus. In the problem of comprehending a work of art with its characteristic as a "shifter", our appreciation of the artwork will not only bring us to the matter of "from where an artwork can be produced/created/referred to", but also to the finding about the problem of "to where the artwork can produce/create or refer to something outside of itself."
Considering the "picturesque power" of Irman's works, the problem naturally lies not only in the case of how we find the footprints of the quality of the wooden surfaces, or the removal (the changing) of the alphabetical topography on the wooden containers, in order to become something existing on the canvass planes of Irman's works (so that we can still remember the wooden containers). On the other hand, the problem is not only about hoping to find a kind of "quality of painting" on the planes of the wooden containers, which Irman painted (so that we can perceive them as if they are "artwork"). Most importantly, the problem lies in our awareness in considering the problems that can arise between the fissures of the two attentions about the richness of life and art. One is invited to interpret the various quotations Irman is showing, and simultaneously to assign our awareness to go away from the meanings of signs in our daily lives, signs that often drown a person (us) in the (seemingly) fixed meanings.
Bandung, March 2005
Rizki A. Zaelani | Curator
ph. +62.21.3448126 | fax. +62.21.3853203
info@cp-artspace.com