Artist's Statment - Robbie O'Halloran

It can be said that certain historically grounded notions of abstraction have positioned its operation beyond the self-conscious control of the artist. The concept of 'pure form' could be defined as that which is non referential and unmediated by the rational control of meaning. I am interested in claims for the purity and transcendence of abstraction both as concept and as form. However I do not subscribe entirely to these claims as they have appeared within the documented history of modern art. My work seeks to depict a complexity within notions of abstraction and within the interpretation of abstract projects as a reaction to the simplicity of generalised accounts of its function.

Simply stated, I am motivated by the belief in an alternative to what I perceive as a literal and theoretical impasse within much contemporary debate on abstraction. I am opposed to the prevailing attitude that would accuse abstract projects of irrelevance within contemporary debate.

My intention is not simply to participate in a non-critical ritual of abstract markmaking. It is rather to elaborate and develop the complexities of what has become a historically stultified debate. Within recent and contemporary practice there has developed an amount of superstition and cynicism around the concept of expression. Through such notions as expression and intuition, abstraction has become conflated with quasi-romantic notions of the individual and their struggle. Lazy misconceptions of abstraction's operation are embedded in modern culture. I am thinking of a type of painting for instance that is taken to be essentially expressive of that to which its title commits it.

I concede that artworks participate in a much more complex relation than that which is provided either by the alleged content as given by the artist (author) of the piece or by any single interpretation which may be imposed on the piece once it has been released into the field of interpretation. That is to say that artworks are never totally defined either by the artist or by the spectator. It seems reasonable to suggest therefore a complexity at work within all artworks (not only abstraction) that is beyond the self-conscious control of the artist. I would suggest that one of the problems with abstraction has not been its alleged denial of content, rather that the abstract nature of content and meaning has been denied by every form which has positioned itself in opposition to the abstract. Perhaps the requirement of contemporary art, abstract or otherwise is to recognise a more substantial and complex relation to the world and its contents.