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The Painter's Palette - September 2008
A recent email exchange between artist Gede Mahendra Yasa (M) and curator, Wang Zineng (Z).
Z : In this present exhibition, you have chosen to explore oil paint and colour pigment, two important elements in painting. Can I say this is a conscious effort to move into exploring deeper inside particular elements after your last solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, White Series: Allegory of Painting where you looked at the different elements of painting – stretcher, canvas, oil paint and pigment?
M : Yup! I’m still focusing on the elements of painting, such as stretcher (wood), support (fabric+ground/gesso), oil paint (pigment+solvent), staples as the “connector” between the fabric and wood, easel as the support of painting, and the “representation” formed out of oil paint. Almost every aspect of painting, basically.
Z : What is the most difficult aspect of white-on-white paintings? Is it true that such paintings are never entirely monochromatic – in the sense that you mix a tingle of blue or violet or some other colour to achieve varying tones of white?
M : Ya, I need other colors, or a lower value than merely pure white. However, I don’t preoccupy myself with only nuances of blue or violet. On greenish white, I use a green tinge (cold gray), on reddish white, I use red (warm grey) to create volume. It is truly a different thing to paint “with” white, and to paint “white”. Moresoover when the white has textural quality/gestural quality which contains granularity. To paint the illusion of volume I have to inject a tinge value of gray to achieve the illusion of volume. You can see, in the paintings of Robert Ryman, how he used pure white, because his texture is real, whereas in mine, the texture are the textural illusion of white oil paint.
Z : Are you satisfied with what you have found out about oil paint and colour pigment?
M : At the very least, it opened my eyes to the complexity of oil paint. Colours are a physical optical effect, as generally known, that was found by Newton. On the other hand, talking about oil paint, is talking about the materialization/container of colours. When we use paint direct from tube, or apply thick strokes of white oil paint, we can consider it similar to the activity of drawing white porcelain, or other white coloured objects. There is a “gray” quality in it.
Z : What do you think your viewers feel about your paintings?
M : I do not know what they think, but I do hope that people can grasp the difference between white as “representation” and white as colour.
Z : Your white paintings are labelled by some people as white on white paintings. The term white on white probably derived from a part of the title of Russian artist Kasimir Malevich's landmark 1918 painting, Suprematist Composition: White on White, a work that carried philosophical depth through the subtle character of its lines and boundaries between the two shades of white. It is probably the world's first ever white on white painting. And then, there is Robert Rauschenberg's seven panel White Painting made in 1951 which went a step further than Malevich by eliminating the painter's gesture and is a certain prototype of Minimalism. Finally, there is Robert Ryman's whose white on white paintings in the 1950s was so dominant in his practice. Your works remind me most of Ryman's. What are your thoughts on this? Do you have a particular affinity for any of their works?
M : I do indeed admire Ryman, the last giant of white painting :-D, but my view comes from a realist/materialist who tries to “paint” the white aspect of Ryman in a realistic technique. However, you can also find various undercolour layers in the paintings of Ryman. Those were his effort to instill a bit of contrast in his white. So Ryman is not such a purist after all :-D.
Z : Do you have any favourite painters? And what aspects of their paintings are interesting?
M : Robert Ryman with his white, Lucian Freud with his gestural direct realism, Willem de Kooning's Woman Series, Jasper Johns with his encaustic technique, Jackson Pollock with his drips—technically developed after the surrealists' automatic drawing, Jenny Saville's body exploration, Robert Morris on his installations, etc.
Z : What are you reading right now that is related to art and/or painting?
M : Wittgenstein’s Tractatus :-D
Z : I would like to focus on the (perhaps by now died down) debate on the death of painting in its effect on practising painters. Your art practice is extremely relevant because of its intimate reflexivity about painting. The effects of the death of painting is often understood as a diminished domain i.e. painting no longer bears any relevance, painting is a stagnant practice and therefore painters and their works are no longer interesting, exciting, and affective. What do you make of this debate?
M : I have no comment :-D
Z : For me, the death of painting is an ultimately positive debate, which urges us to acknowledge that painting now draws from, and makes reference to many other media. Painting’s relationship to photography has always been one filled with tensions – in what ways and to what extent, we can never quite say when speaking generally. I want to talk particularly about the relationship between photography and painting in your art practice. Can you briefly describe the process by which you begin a composition? How is the photographic image used?
M : It could be a reference to itself. I call it “self-sufficient” or “self-referential” painting. For example, I am now working on two pieces of works, 3 Flags Abstracted and 1st Lesson. On 3 Flags Abstracted, I piled three canvases, small, medium, and big, in the manner of Jasper John’s 3 Flag. The upper painting, the smallest, will be made with Pollockian real drip painting. On the bigger second and third, I mimicked the first in a painstaking realist way. On 1st Lesson, I’ll make a two-panel piece. The left will be done in Pollockian real drip painting, while the right will be the mirror image, made with a painstaking realist technique. So there exists an image symmetry, although not in terms of technique and definitely in spirit. The Pollockian real drip paint has accident as its core and enamel+aluminium as the material. The copy-mirror uses oil paint in a slow painstaking realist process, with no accidents whatsoever. These two paintings are very self-sufficient. They don’t need anything but themselves.
OK, my process. First, I would make small design/reference paintings, no more than A4 paper size, on canvas (primed or not primed) or melamin (some kind of wood board sealed with plastic?). And then, I take a digital photo, print it, and paint it. In this, there are four transformations already - real small painting - digital photo (binary data) - printing on CMYK color system - oil paint. In my previous exhibition, Hendra Membaca Pollock (2007, Emmitan Fine Art Gallery, Surabaya), I took the characters of materials and the automatic-accidental drip painting of Pollock. The reference from enamel+aluminium paint -digital photo - digital print - oil paint.
Z : Do you feel like your paintings need to be presented in a certain way – where it concerns lighting, other paintings and objects in the environment?
M : I read Michel Fried’s Absorption and Theatricality. He puts himself against art/painting installations that he found as too theatrical, environment demanding, site specific, especially pointing to the installation of Robert Morris. He puts forward the self-sufficient paintings, which are able to speak for themselves no matter what environments they are in. I don’t take the dichotomy by heart, a very modernist mode of thinking. When I need a special surrounding or environment to display my work, I’ll use it.
Z : What is next after exploring paint and pigment?
M : As I said in the beginning, I’ll keep on exploring the elements of painting. That, as well as the plan to examine the process of restoration, research on the process of oil paint manufacture, and the weathering condition of painting over time on damaged paintings in museums etc.
