(2017)
What is visuality? What is it connected to? When a person creates an image, does it inherently link to something visual?
One could argue that art, by its very nature, is intrinsically tied to humanity, because even without human intervention, there are already images in the world—patterns on animals, the colors of fish and birds, the textures of stones, trees, and even the hues of the seasons. The world itself is inherently colored and shaped.
But what happens when a person creates new colors, new forms? And then adds their own context and concept? Why does the desire to express emerge in humans?
The presented, visible world is a kind of given. This "given" conceals something—it conceals nonexistence. That is, we do not know what "nonexistent" truly means. Yet it is difficult to imagine that nothing ever existed, because everything we create comes from something that already exists. The creation of matter from absolute nothingness is, in itself, impossible.
Therefore, perhaps, in its ultimate essence, art is a game—a play of forms, colors, sounds, and so on. (But what kind of game?!)
The only thing a person creates without a physical form is their thought. Consciousness has no material substance, yet it exists through the experience of material things. When thought engages in play, it becomes art, and this inevitably takes shape, is written, is expressed, and so on. Even a word is a form of matter—a combination of sounds and waves.
However, humans also use art to express their struggles. In an anthropomorphic world, human power is supreme. Humanity has made art its domain of expression. The representational forms "learned" from the world have been transformed into a space where people reflect on their own challenges.
Thus, art can sometimes be a "game" for humans and, at other times, a foundation for reflecting on problems. However, these roles can also be interchanged. The problems expressed through art can encompass all types and contexts, particularly philosophical, social, and many others.
The discourse of lightheartedness that art often adopts is joyful, allowing humans to revel in the harmony and patterns inherent in forms, colors, sounds, and so forth. The artist finds satisfaction in the fact that they have paint, a canvas, a brush, and a model. They begin to "transform" color into a person and the person into color. They strive to feel the person's essence and, in an ecstatic immersion into being, bring their constructed reality to the canvas through mimesis and imitation.
It seems as though no problem exists, yet the territory of culture will inevitably impose countless challenges on this work.
In itself, no artwork inherently contains a problem. The problem arises when it begins to gain authorization within culture, and this authorization happens instantly when we look at the work. At that moment, it is interpreted within a cultural context, leading to questions about which visual language it repeats, its qualitative nature, whether it is a primary or secondary text, who the author is, and so forth.
It must be said that art, in this form, did not exist before, nor were the spaces between visual languages as hermetic as they are today. Early art emerged more from ritualistic content, which is why the concept of "art for art’s sake" did not exist. Starting with the Renaissance, the authorization of art as a multitude of distinct languages began. In painting, various directions and styles appeared. There were different masters and different outcomes. Yet, the underlying episteme remained singular.
Humanity has mirrored in art what it once did with language—everyone began to "speak" in different languages.
Art distanced itself from the norms imposed by religion or other forms of authority. Religion itself relied on imagery to make its texts more convincing. For a significant period, art was rooted in the structure of texts, prophecies, and myths.
Today, however, the individual stands alone, free to do whatever they desire. Yet, it is precisely here that visual languages begin to dictate terms, unconsciously assimilating into the realm of human freedom of expression.
Thus, in the present day, myths may provide a freer space for inspiration than the mere entertainment of any particular visual language.
However, an artist’s problem should not be what to depict or how to depict it.
The real challenge lies in distinguishing their language from that of others. When an artist speaks in someone else’s language, their voice becomes silence for the culture because that language is already being spoken by someone else. This makes the artistic space inherently one of power dynamics. While it is possible for an artist to speak in another’s language, they must still connect it to their own context, creating something that captures attention. In doing so, a kind of plagiarism emerges—one that, through resemblance, encroaches on the territories of an authentic language.
Yet, when two different artists speak the same language, their differences inherently make those two similar languages distinct. Within the cultural context, this remains a struggle for power, though not with heterogeneous content but with homogeneous intent.
However, before an artist contemplates all of this, they must first read the visual languages that already exist. They need to possess the code to interpret these languages. Once they acquire this code, the question of how to depict becomes irrelevant, because the "how" implies selecting from already established forms of expression—something that is not inherent to the artist’s free will.
And what is the artist’s free will? Is it, once again, simply play?
This "play" is not as simple as the connotations of the word might deceive us into believing. To play within these hermetic spaces requires a profound internal foundation. A new space must be introduced from somewhere to begin the play. Yet, such a space does not exist out there. All the paths seem blocked…
When the first human painted in a cave, they had no example to follow. That first painting was a discovery of human potential by humanity itself. If we take this primal beginning as a clear example, then we must think in this way: to have a space for play, we somehow need to find ourselves in the same state as that first artist.
To achieve this, we could simply erase all existing languages and visual codes from our consciousness and begin to exist in a completely sterile space.
However, in that space, we would have to exist entirely alone, and our mind, shaped by "speaking" in various languages, would struggle to make initial contact with its own language. Creating our own language would be immensely difficult. Yet it would be even harder to find what is truly ours in a space cluttered with the "trash" of others.
What is unnecessary for me (even if it is essential for someone else) becomes excess and must be discarded. I absolutely need a sterile space to truly exist.
Perhaps the act of clearing away could be considered the first stenographic record of culture. The primitive human likely became a cultural being only after removing the "trash." In a cave where waste accumulated over time, the physical challenge of existence would have arisen, forcing the inhabitants to remove the refuse for entirely material, spatial, and practical reasons.
Faced with a filled space, the first human made a choice: either to leave the cave themselves or to remove the excess waste. By choosing the latter, they took the first step on the path of culture.
Later, humans realized that they needed their own personal space, and others began to attribute "significance" or "value" to the "excess."
Thus, the first gesture of removing trash was also the first cultural act. In this sense, the entire stenography of culture could be described as an ongoing process of taking and setting aside, organizing, and sterilizing.
It is not the idea of cleanliness that exists but rather its choreography—the act of taking and setting aside. When a child imitates their mother throwing away trash, they do not imagine a clean city; instead, they are fascinated by the movement of picking up and tossing something into the bin. For them, it is a game—or at least, for some children, it might be exactly that.
This suggests that if the primitive human needed physical labor to achieve sterilization, the modern artist must accomplish this mentally. For the primitive, the result of such sterilization would have been the games they imagined in their freshly cleared cave, illuminated by the flames of a fire. They might have drawn as part of their play, and who knows what mood or spirit they would have been in.
But for the modern person, the challenge is far more complex. After the act of sterilization, they might find themselves unable to create anything at all, because the language or form of expression that comes to mind might resemble someone else’s too closely, leading them to refrain from creating altogether—or to create very little, only that which feels truly their own.
For us, a sterilized cultural space does not mean the disappearance of cultural languages in reality. The echoes of these languages remain, constantly surrounding and influencing us, making the task of finding something entirely our own all the more daunting.
A situation arises where the territory of culture becomes endlessly cluttered with various languages and codes, with no hope of resolution, because culture remembers everything. For the artist, the space for expression becomes increasingly limited. The number of forms and combinations diminishes, or they begin to resemble each other too closely.
And this slight difference often feels unconvincing...
This brings us to the second path for play: the path that involves leaving everything as it is. The entire "trash" of culture becomes the artist's building material, and they engage in constant citation. They seek nothing new because they already have everything—they simply discover new connections.
In this approach, one could say that culture is perceived as a given, just like raw matter or the natural world. In other words, culture loses its intrinsic meaning and becomes just another backdrop for humanity, as ordinary as a landscape on the Tibetan plateau.
Thus, the power structure has been dismantled and neutralized by its own authority. Everything has become permissible, and no one is held accountable. The artist today finds themselves in the same position as the first painter in the cave. However, unlike the first artist, the modern artist holds themselves accountable. They want to believe in their authenticity and genuineness because the power of newly expressed languages has weakened.
For this reason, the artist seeks to gain authority through other means, striving to distinguish themselves from their peers in new ways. Contemporary art is no longer about opposing signs or symbols; it has become a competition between artists themselves, driven by the pursuit of popularity. Today, an artist's titles and portfolio have become paramount.
The stakes are placed on popularity—no one pays close attention to what the artist paints anymore; the primary measure has become how popular they are.
So, once again, there are two paths: marketing and public relations, or transcendence.
The path of transcendence involves sterilization, yet it also requires summoning energy and diversity from transcendence itself. Of course, various combinations of these two paths are possible, but the starting points seem to remain the same.
At this juncture, we might ask: what is the defining impetus, in general or specifically, that compels an artist to engage in representation? Today, it might simply be the desire to enter a system of power—to claim a place within it—without any inevitable or deeper reason for being an artist. While it could be argued that interaction with power is unavoidable, what is the primary cause of visual representation, the one that originates within the artist rather than externally, where the work later enters a system of power?
It must be said that even the most popular artist ultimately stands on their work. Their product—something to show, something to be judged—remains the core.
Therefore, the most genuine and profound problem must exist between the artist and their work.
The resolution of these problems may, in fact, be what we read in the works themselves.
If the world conceals something, then the artist who strives to incorporate everything into play and seeks different forms and contexts will inevitably find themselves on a boundary—a boundary beyond which possibilities vanish.
This is not psychedelia; it is simply the presence of an X between our perception and the object. Our concepts and the objects themselves elude one another, as our perception is, in truth, a constructed world shaped by our character and experiences. What is imitated or represented is first structured by our minds according to these internal frameworks, while reality itself retreats, remaining distant and alien.
An artist who is content with having paint and all the necessary tools to create, and who begins to paint, merely indulges in the cultural ritual of what it means to "be a painter." They adopt the construct of culture and conform to it, deriving pleasure and satisfaction from their limited scope and goals, which never attempt to uncover reality.
An artist who steps away from their "palette" and acknowledges the existence of an X becomes engaged in a true game. This game is authentic in the sense that it presents the artist with the challenge of incorporating something unknown into the play.
Play inherently involves spectacle, as any game is compelling precisely because its outcome is not known in advance. Anything can happen within the game, and it is this uncertainty that makes it fundamentally performative in its essence.
In visual art, play entails a dual challenge—both for the artist and the viewer. Spectacle (visibility) thus endlessly accompanies the visual image and its unchanging presence within the flow of time. It is as if the play repeats infinitely, cycles back to the same point, yet never truly ends, leaving the outcome perpetually unseen.
Here, X holds an ontologically fundamental position. Play ensures the spectacle of the visual while simultaneously guaranteeing its eternal return.
Thus, works of visual art can be seen as "unfinished" ontological objects—unfinished not due to some misunderstanding or vagueness of the concept of ontology, but because of the nature of play itself. Ontology, in this case, is the stability that secures the irreplaceability of X, while simultaneously excluding any alternative possibilities.
Behind the first artist, there was likely nothing. We do not know what the origin of the first art was; we can also mark this with X.
Thus: without X, there would be no art. Without X, the world itself would not be what it is. Our perception would necessarily change if we knew the cause of every cause of every cause. Perhaps the world is so inherently spectacular because it conceals something. It is entirely empty, despite being full.
Scientific and human reasoning suggest that once there was nothing—no space, no time—and then everything emerged, as complete and universal as it is today.
Such a world makes for a compelling narrative, designed to intrigue humans, fix their gaze on its mysteries, and simultaneously draw them into play.
After all, aesthetic objects fundamentally bear the mark of X in their very essence.
Humanity has skillfully aligned art with its ego, and the ego delights in its creations being appreciated (though this has little to do with the universal play of X). Yet even if this were not the case, every great artist creates a play where X is hidden within the visual. This image and its X become far more localized and alien than the world itself, which is otherwise familiar to humans. As a result, the viewer cannot look away.
Every image that does not incorporate X in some way faces the fundamental problem of visual art.
Perhaps the entirety of human genius lies in the ability to uncover X, first to accept its existence and then to engage with it. An artist who sees only paint, a given reality (nature), and canvas—and who is content with these surroundings or preoccupied with the languages of culture—will never paint an image captivating enough to intrigue a gaze detached from cultural frameworks.
Such an artist will never paint the person standing before them. They believe that the person truly stands there. But to paint a person, the person must disappear.
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