Introduction Distanced vision leading to mediated perception

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1 Introduction In this paper, I will start by describing my current abstract painting project. I will then consider some issues related to abstraction that arose from my painting and research carried out for the body of work. I will show how a certain type of abstract art is innately mediated. Moreover, in juxtaposing abstract patterns from different sources, abstract art is able to provide narratives. I will also briefly discuss the decorative aspect of abstract art since the latter is sometimes called into question. Distanced vision leading to mediated perception I like to identify myself as a global nomad. Nomadic life has allowed me to encounter many cultures and societies. Such mixed exposure helped me to gain a systematic method of reflecting on societal patterns. I have visualized some of these patterns in my paintings in the form of repeated windows of high-rise apartments or fields of marsh grass. The extraction of a pattern from many experiences demands a relative objectivity as well as a detachment, a distance. This distance can be considered as a mediation between the experiences and the depicted pattern. I have always been interested in abstract patterns that are obtained by distancing oneself from the subject. In this paper, I would like to focus my discussion on abstraction deriving from patterns. Before starting, I would like to clarify the two stages of abstraction that are involved in the employment of patterns in the new series of work called Story of a global nomad. First, let us take pre-existing patterns or the patterns that derive from mimesis, the representation of nature (in the Book 10 of The Republic). Some distance from the subject matter was necessary to arrive to stylization and abstraction. Zooming out of repeated motifs, either physically/visually or conceptually/mentally, allows for patterns to take form. For example, in the case of an older series of paintings called modules, I went from representation of grid-like high-rise apartment windows to forming patterns. (fig. 1) This distancing, the zooming out process, enables these imageries to form a pattern and to become abstract. This abstract image was formed by recording the grid-like patterns of the windows of high-rise apartments while noting the differences between them. In this case, physical distance allowed me to see the visual patterns. This type of abstraction has its origin on the original object, with a certain detachment. Through mediation, its source and reference remain embedded in the abstraction. The second stage involves juxtaposing some of those pre-existing patterns to form a new image, resulting in an abstract painting. For example, in the new series of work called Story of a global nomad, (fig. 2) I take another step back from the formed patterns, by using the pre-existing ones to compose my own narrative. I use patterns that are once removed from representation of nature and as I compose abstract images with those visual references, the abstract images I create are thrice removed from nature. (Through the composition of abstract paintings from mimetic patterns that are once removed from nature, I end up with (I result in) an image with three levels of removal from nature.) The

2 realization and acknowledgement of being a migratory global nomad made me feel free to use and appropriate patterns from everywhere. Although the first stage involves representation of nature, the second stage, formation of patterns, and the third stage, juxtaposition, the processes of de-contextualization is similar in all stages. In the new series of work, the pre-existing patterns, already loaded with their reference and significance coming from diverse places and sources are alloyed, thus creating a narrative that is non-linear and implicit, rather than explicit. By exercising a choice of a specific visual reference and juxtaposing the patterns from diverse places in certain ways, the objectivity gained from the distance reverts to subjectivity and allows for a personal narrative. Fig. 1 J. Yu, modules , 36 x36, (medium), Fig. 2 J. Yu, Story of a global nomad, 72 x72, Issues arising from the current body of work: I will tackle abstraction and narrative in a moment, but I would like to start by briefly discussing how certain abstract art could be read as decorative. At a first glance, my use of patterns as source images could easily lead to criticism of my abstract images as being merely decorative, which sometimes can be a justifiable criticism towards certain types of abstract art. In the case of abstraction deriving from representation of nature however, I would argue that abstraction always carries a reference with it. Only when abstraction loses its reference, and before it assumes self-reference, does it then become decorative. If we look at this Iranian painting from the fifteenth century (fig. Plate 3), it may well be perceived as a decorative work. However, as this painting references (knowing the reference of this painting as) the name of Ali repeated four times in circular motion, makes it ceases to be perceived as a decoration and turns it (can then be perceived as) into an abstraction.

3 If we were able, for a moment, to void ourselves of our knowledge of art history, we could apply the same logic to this Mondrian painting (fig. Plate 4), which bears a strikingly similar resemblance to the aforementioned work. As such, I would argue that one of the factors that distinguishes abstraction from decoration is its metaphorical role, its significance. Significance here, should not be confused with significant form. Abstract narratives Matthew Ritchie, in one of his interviews says there is this ridiculous idea that was left from the 20th century that abstraction and figuration are legitimate poles, and I from the very start have incorporated the two things together and was fascinated by the idea that there is really no distinction. It s just a question of scale. Matthew Ritchie, "The Living Will", 2004, Oil and marker on canvas, 88 x 99 inches Now I would like to reflect upon the accepted notion that abstraction is in opposition to representation and re-examine the subsequently implied notion that abstraction is incapable of (or unrelated to) narration.

4 Kirk Varnedoe says in Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock: Abstract art, while seeming insistently to reject and destroy representation, in fact steadily expands its possibilities. It adds new words and phrases to the language by colonizing the lead slugs and blank spaces in the type tray. Seeming nihilism becomes productive, or, to put it another way, one tradition s killer virus becomes another tradition s seed. Stressing abstract art s knowledge directly belies the old notion that abstraction is what we call an Adamic language, a bedrock form of expression at a timeless point prior to the accretion of conventions. If anything, the development of abstraction in the last fifty years suggests something more Alexandrian than Adamic, that is, a tradition of invention and interpretation that has become exceptionally refined and intricate, encompassing a mind-boggling range of drips, stains, blobs, blocks, bricks, and blank canvases. The woven web of abstraction is now so dense that, for its adepts, it can snare and cradle vanishingly subtle, evanescent, and slender forms of life and meaning. Abstraction is a remarkable system of productive reductions and destructions that expands our potential for expression and communication. (Varnedoe, 2006, pp. xv xvi) In my works, narrative occurs through the juxtaposition of different pre-existing patterns that are already loaded with significance. De-contextualization and re-contextualization of patterns is what creates a new narrative. The narrative formed by abstraction may be less direct and more referential than the one of figuration. Julie Mehretu incorporates the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms as she alternates between historical narratives and fictional landscapes. She combines a personal language of signs and symbols with architectural imagery to create her elaborate semi-abstractions. Simultaneously engaged with the formal concerns of color and line and the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, she is interested in "the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity." The underlying structure of her work consists of socially charged public spaces--government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools, and airports--drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. She inscribes her own narrative into these decontextualized, highly controlled spaces through the layering of personal markings. Mehretu achieves an effect of compositional maelstrom, as elements advance and recede within the graphically ambiguous spaces. With paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction while constantly referencing the world around us, she creates perfect metaphors for the increasingly interconnected and complex character of the 21st century.

5 Julie Mehretu, Excerpt (Suprematist Evasion), 2003, ink and acrylic on canvas, 32 x 54. In the case of Franz Ackermann, a form of spontaneous impulse is used to offer reflection upon the notion of the artist as the inhabitant of an intangible space in which local experience and global self-awareness become sensuously interpenetrated. He considers himself of as a (sort of) wanderer who collects sensations in unfamiliar social and cultural territories, sensations that mutate though his act of recollection and re-/de-construction. His works suggest a hybridity(zation) (composed) of source materials and references: souvenirs of the memory s engagement with place. If Ackermann practices a quirky kind of cultural geography in his works, we can say that his rationalist tendencies are filtered through the unpredictable chaos of intuition and imagination, and vice versa. Franz Ackermann, Mental Map: Evasion, 1996, Acrylic on Canvas, 195 x 210cm I reflect upon the status of certain artists as migratory or nomadic creatures, continuously shifting from one context to the other, moving across boundaries, slipping in and out of identifiable political and cultural affiliations, reinventing identity positions within an increasingly liquid field of trans-global relations. In my new series of paintings called Story of a global nomad, I am de-contextualizing the patterns from their origins and then re-contextualizing them in my works to compose a personal narrative. The complexity and inter-connectedness of our global society is also apparent in contemporary figurative paintings, such as the ones by Neo Rauch. The references here however, are much more direct (and less mediated).

6 Neo Rauch, Lot 38, "Lokal," oil on canvas, 55 by 39 1/4 inches, 1998 Conclusion To conclude then, I would reiterate that detachment, distance and mediation permits abstraction to take place. The process of de-contextualizing by abstraction and recontextualizing by juxtaposition creates a non-linear and implicit narrative within abstraction, a narrative that is particularly suited for describing the trans-global world we are living in. J. Yu, Story of a global nomad (Tsunami), 72 x72, 2007