The Artistic Imagination as Symptom

Exhibition notes for the second installment

of ‘The Imagination is an Overused Cliché’
Antares Gomez b.

The title of this exhibition series points to the artistic imagination as an

overrated process inasmuch as the terms inspiration, creation, originality and
genius point to an ineffable realm of magic and build the myth of the artist as the
sole agent in artistic production. The situation presented by such a myth is similar
to the story of Genesis in relation to the theory of evolution in that the processes of
artistic production are mistakenly attributed to a self-created (and therefore
ahistorical) creator—the autonomously inspired imagination of the artist. The
imagination as such is purely imaginary and hence, the notion of the artist as
genius is merely an imaginary discourse, unfounded and unreal.

Contrary to the notion of the artist as a masturbatory font of creation is the

assertion that artists and their imaginations are partly conditioned by their
obtaining histories and social processes. More specifically, the imagination and the
painterly eye cannot be taken as self-sufficient systems since they rely heavily on
already existing communication technologies and conventions of visual language.
In other words, the imagination and the imaginary discourse of ‘the artist as genius’
are primarily situated in and structured by the symbolic realm of language.

This is the point illustrated in the painting by Cian Dayrit where the reproduction
of a photograph is overlaid by textual descriptions. Whereas the image itself is
relatively placeless save for a few clues such as can be taken from the figures’
manner of dress and their immediate environment, the text serves to ‘complete the
picture’, in fact, to precede it, by providing more specific indications as to the cause
and temporality of the event of death. Moreover, the text alludes to the logic by
which Plato dismissed the practice of painting due to the relative distance of
painted images from the ‘Ideal’ as mere copies of a copy. This applies doubly for
paintings of photographs, and so on as Dayrit mock problematizes. This, however,
is key because despite Dayrit’s exasperation with Plato and his imaginary realm of
the ideal, there is still the gap between a thing and its representation, between a
thing and its signifier or symbolic counterpart.

This gap is not merely a temporal divide that influences the truth value of the
image (e.g. with the possibility of alteration/inaccuracy) but also a founding
psychological one based on the theory of the human being as a decentered animal.
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan discusses this at length when he describes
the ‘mirror stage’, the idea being that when infants first see their reflection in a
mirror, it is the first time they are able to constitute themselves as individuals. The
“I” of the self is born of the “other” of the representation. Hence, even the most
subjective “I” of identity becomes inseparable from the intermediary of the
Symbolic, a necessarily linguistic realm, and the rest of the world (our perception,
knowledge, and experience of it) follows.

According to Lacan, the realm of the Symbolic (language, signs, etc.) often
reaches a point of excess where the signifier lacks a direct reference and it is this
pure Symbolic that accounts for such metaphysical speculations as inspiration and
faith. As Pascal notoriously states of the purely symbolic ritual, “…kneel, repeat the
words, and the faith will come.” This brings us to Bryan Tang’s work depicting a
pious figure in the midst of what appear to be fellow worshippers. Let us treat this
portrayal of a particular instance in our social practice as a clue to the universal, as
its symptom, so to speak. Here, it is interesting to point out how Lacan theorizes
Nietzsche’s notion of “God is dead” as something that aims not so much to subvert
Christianity as a basis for atheism but rather to point out the necessary
transformation of God into the Symbolic (by his “death” and subsequent absence,
so to speak). In other words, that God’s “death” was necessary in order for
Christianity to be born as a faith. Truth be told, there would be very little need for
faith if God were really walking around and smiting people. However, this isn’t
about whether or not God does or does not exist (the debate is rather pointless) but
rather how the name of ‘God’ can be substituted for a given Symbolic Order or
structuring principle of the universe and it is this ‘big Other’ by which social
relations are reproduced. Indeed, even Nietzsche states with modesty, “I fear we
are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar”.

Returning to the point of the excess of the Symbolic, let us turn to the work of
Raymond Carlos, “50”, which portrays an old couple kissing on their 50th wedding
anniversary. The immediate function of such a portrayal is that of a focus for
memory, and as time goes by, an object of nostalgia. What is curious here is
Carlos’ erasure of the referent photograph’s background and his use of the two
black bars that frame the portrait to evoke the wide-screen format of films. These
two devices effectively displace the memory from its moment and lend it a fictional
quality, that of a memory that didn’t exactly happen as such. First, the idea of the
memento points us to one of the curious but necessary byproducts of the Symbolic
as discussed by Lacan, the objet petit a –a fetish born of the desire that comes from
the absence of the thing. It is in this nostalgic capacity as fetish that mementos
function as a link to that instance wherein we are left with little but the remainder
(or Symbolic excess) of the thing desired. Moreover, the fictionalization of the
memory brings our attention to the objet petit a as explicated by the philosopher
Slavoj Žižek. According to him, this meaningful fetish is the “embodiment of a lie”
around which our reality is centered and allows for the continuity of a particular
order, as for example, the family photographs in ‘The Truman Show’.

From this unattainable desire and perhaps using JR Dela Rama’s insistent
depiction of objects with holes in them, let us turn the discussion to another matter.
Where there is desire, there is a lack that cannot fully be accounted for. More
importantly, where the Symbolic falters, the Real irrupts into the scene. To be clear,
the Real as used by Lacan is not a reality beneath reality (or behind it, or whatever),
rather it is those empty spaces which render reality inconsistent, seemingly
unfinished or deficient. The Real is that which the Symbolic cannot put into words,
as when in video games one reaches the end of the programmed ‘world’ and
encounters nothing but amorphous terrain or a literal dead end of reality. ‘The
Matrix’ also comes to mind. As such, the Real is traumatic in that it confronts us
with the (real) fiction of the Symbolic.

Alden Santiago’s work proves cogent in this regard as it plays out the trauma
inherent in the gap between the Symbolic and the Real. Where at first there is the
image of a pair of corpses attended by tentative pallbearers/gravediggers, we
notice that the scene is reproduced in miniature on the corpses’ shrouds. This turns
the representation in on itself and transfigures the object of the scene from one
where the gravediggers are reflecting on the others’ deaths into one where they are
mourners whose gaze is transfixed by their own demise at the hands of the
Symbolic. As Lacan quotes Hegel, “a word is the death of what it designates, its
mortification.” What the miniature in the shroud suggests is the infinite repetition
we find when we place two mirrors opposite each other. Hence, here we have an
illustration of the negativity of the Symbolic’s violent reduction of the wealth of
experience into the singular truth of the trait unaire. The Real here does not
designate the original/lost pre-Symbolic but rather that thing within the Symbolic
that, now and then, allows us to glimpse its emptiness, its fictitiousness.

Despite the impossibility of existing outside of language, outside of the Symbolic,

Žižek posits the need to “pursue the endless task of symbolizing the Real” in order
to plot out the limits of the Symbolic. This is effectively the similarity between
Santiago’s and Mark Sanchez’ work where they attempt to paint an impossible
picture in order to draw attention to its own unreality. Though it is more clearly the
focus with Sanchez, by employing such visual devices as skewed or incomplete
perspectival clues, sketchy rendering, drafting grids, absurd floating shapes in the
sky reminiscent of the platforms in Super Mario, drips, and so on, they present the
Symbolic device of the image as an inconsistent and unstable system. An
interesting feature in Sanchez’s work is the main figure: a man whose speech is
conducted through an animal that emerges from his throat, the personal other of
identity. With this is mind, we can take from theoretical psychoanalysis the view
that we should not look at art as some alienating Symbolic fiction that we must
explain, but rather as something that must take as its project the (re)explanation of
reality and its fictions in order to be able to expose the strangeness of everyday life.
Furthermore, the artistic imagination as an illusory autonomy must be turned in on
itself in order to address its own absurdity. As Žižek asserts, “we only think we are
free because we lack the language needed to articulate our unfreedom.”

The Curators