On Matter: Three Works* by João Simões
*
The works that I’m referring to here are from the
exhibitions in San Francisco (PAL, 2001),
Berlin (NTSC, 2002), and of the Museu Nacional de Historia Natural/Sala Veado,
Lisbon
('10 giugno-30 ottobre 2001, 2002').
The works of João Simões remit us, not to a question about art
and its limits, but rather to a question about the things that allow art.
Before human ingeniousness there’s what human ingeniousness transforms
and the instruments through which it transforms.
But it isn’t about showing a thing that ceases precisely to be a thing
through human intervention, in the tradition of Duchamp, for example, in which
a urinal transforms itself in art by being placed out of context. If what
underlines this position, in Duchamp, is the conviction that we have to start
seeing things in other ways, that everything can be something beyond itself
and that the artist creates things themselves by conferring them a new meaning,
that is, it is implicit the need to see more, in the work of Simões
what’s in stake is not a lack of giving new meaning to things, but rather
a lack of seeing things themselves, because we see too little; seeing more
is seeing less.
Consequently, these works show the cumbersome evidence that we don’t
know well the things we utilize, we don’t see them well. And, independently
of this, not only do we utilize them constantly but we also use them to
produce works of art. When one looks at a projector what does one see?
A thing that
is used to show something else. And that other thing is not more important,
that other thing is what is important. When one looks at a VCR what does
one see? Again, a thing that is used for another thing, more important
than itself.
These things that are used to see other more important things, do not interest
us truly unless as means to obtain what is important: that which they reveal.
But what they reveal is from the start inflated with meaning. It is as
if, in painting, colors were less important than what they represent. Insisting
on a comparison with painting: for Simões, independently of the use
that one gives to the yellow color, it is necessary to understand that
yellow. What is the yellow color? What is the blue color? What is color? The
question,
here, is not philosophical, but artistic. It is art that demands for its
own body, not theory. It is not a question for art, but for the body of art,
for
its matters.
One does not ask «what is art? », but rather «what makes
art?». What are the things, the matters, that is, that make art be art.
It is not a question for things, but for the things that make art. It is not
even a question about the criteria (the judgment that makes this art and that
not art). Because it is not a question about the after (that which will decide
what is art), but a question about the before (that with which one makes art).
And the most interesting thing in theses works by Simões is to show
us, that regardless of our definitions of art, it begins always with an enemy.
I say enemy and not difficulty, because one can live well with more or less
difficulties, but one cannot live well with an enemy.
And art begins with this not living well, with an enemy. This enemy does
not belong to the realm of the quotidian (regardless of the artist having
it or not), but to the realm of the spirit. That is, art begins with experiencing
matter as the enemy.
Matter is not necessarily an enemy of life, it can even be the contrary,
but not for art. And it’s precisely this that the works of Simões
show us. What we see is the enemy, only the enemy is shown to us. More: we
feel, we understand in his works that without an enemy there doesn’t
even exist art. Thus, we could risk saying (avoiding any misunderstandings)
that in the works of Simões we do not see art but why art.
We stand so utterly facing the evidence of the enemy, that is, we start
to know that the origin of art, each time, is the enemy, every and each time
it is matter thrust into the spirit. Or, in other terms, a war between matter
and anti-matter. Returning to the yellow color, but a step ahead: it is not
even the yellow that is being questioned here, but the application of the
yellow. The yellow in a wall of a house, interior or exterior, the yellow
of a chair or a table are not being questioned. But the yellow that is applied
in a canvas, in painting. That yellow that is formed in part of a work by
Mondrian, for example (or the white in the painting White on White by Malevich),
is what is being questioned in the works of Simões. It is not the transformed
color that matters, but the color that transforms. Better: the color that
creates itself.
Canvas’ colors are, in much of contemporary art, a projector or a VCR.
These colors on the canvas are the ones that Simões questions in his
works. Yellow does not constitute an artistic thing, it presents itself as
an artistic thing; the projector does not show a thing, it presents itself
as a thing. Yellow doesn’t say: I am a sunflower; it says I am yellow.
With Simões; the projector or the VCR are. That is, they aren’t
sheer means to show artistic sunflowers, but entities that present themselves
as art or part of a work of art. It is evident the adherence of these works
to abstractionism, in the same way that, for example, the works of Pedro Cabral
Santo (artist from the same generation of Simões) adhere completely
to figurative (narrative) art. On the other hand, contrarily to abstractionism,
in Simões it is not the idea that is being questioned but the matter.
Besides, and once again, similarly to Mondrian’s work in painting. Matter
is everything.
Simões, by refusing narrative and the idea, leads us back to the matter,
to the unbearable matter.
The unbearable enemy constantly before us. Contrarily to the work of Cabral
Santo, where the presented matter is always overcome by any idea. Consider,
for example, his work where a teddy bear emerges trespassed by a knife:
the work doesn’t intend surely that we detain ourselves on the matter involved,
but precisely in its overcoming, that is, something beyond what appears. While,
his work is aim-material, Simões is purely material.
The matter is everything. The matter is everything, not by negating the
rest, but by concentrating a point of view, an aesthetic preoccupation. Matter
is everything, but everything on work, on this particular aesthetic preoccupation.
There aren’t any traces of contamination or subconscious ambitions of
thesis constructions. There isn’t a beyond to be deciphered. There isn’t
a deconstructive or constructive hermeneutic. The matter presents itself in
its own materiality, that is, in its condition of appearing before us as the
enemy, that is, as a thing that offers resistance. Matter and resistance are
impossible to disassociate in these works of Simões. The instruments
with which one works, with which works of art are presented appear before
us, not as allies, but as enemies. A brush is not a thing that is used to
make something else, but rather an unknown thing. Unknown because, as if in
the absence of other reason, it is a thing about which one does not ask. That,
about which one does not ask, is used.
And it’s precisely the use that is refused by Simões. In the
same way some writers center their work on the enquiry of what makes writing,
that is, language, Simões centers these works on the enquiry of the
things that today are part of most of contemporary art: VCR, projectors, and
sound systems. Materials that, for him, are pre-determined things of a work
of art; things that offer us resistance. That which comes before and is necessary
to a work of art is a previous and unexceedable condition, a resistance, hence,
that which or who opposes us. What is then the relationship that is established
between the artist and its enemy?
The works of Simões show us that the most common attitude is complete
unknowingness that is, contemporary art does not ask for that which conceives
it; it does not ask for the things without which it wouldn’t exist.
And it is precisely in this unknowingness, in the revelation of this unknowingness,
that the works of Simões attain an unavoidable pertinence. Without
question, it is not necessary to enquire about language to write books,
nor to enquire about projectors and VCRs to make works of contemporary
art. But
the presentation of a work that reveals us matter as an invisible material
enemy, in the conception of a work, is a work that assumes a very particular
place in contemporary art. One could say, the place of matter.
Lisboa, 2004
Translated by Isabel Campos