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Scaffolding
the Absent: G.R. Iranna’s Phenomenological Investigations
—Maya Kóvskaya, PhD
“Martin Heidegger pointed out that
in every fear there is the recognition of our vulnerability, our
mortality, and that anxiety, that feeling of finding ourselves
cast adrift, nothing supporting us, nothing to hold on to, is a
premonition of what dying will be: a being cast from existence
into the void, into nothingness.”
—Philosopher Alphonso Lingis
Death is the absence of life. Death
is absent from life and makes its impending presence felt through
our awareness of our own mortality. Thus being mortal means to
host within oneself the possibility of death, and that too by
living. In Iranna’s work, the static nature of birth and death, as
two correlated time-bound events, bracket and punctuate the
continuous nature of life. By focusing on this transitory amalgam
of place and time that we call life, Iranna’s work implicitly
engages questions about birth (where did we come from?) and death
(where are we going?). Thus his work offers a phenomenological
platform for examining conscious experience—understood as being
present and living in this world. While birth is the phenomenon
that triggers the event of our inevitable death, Iranna’s work
hints at the significance of life as a celebration, rather than a
mourning, of our mortality.
In this powerful collection of five
new large-scale works from 2011, Bhiksu, The Valley of
Red, Red River; Scaffold(ing), and Traversing
the Void, G.R. Iranna meditates on human mortality and the
vulnerability of our existence. “I wanted to create the fragile
and slippery ground upon which our life and our existence rests,”
explains the artist. Using the figure of the Buddhist monk and
Buddhist iconography as a metonym for larger phenomenological
questions, he applies his characteristic visual language in the
service of “scaffolding the absent” elements latent in our search
for an understanding of Being. Through his visual interventions,
Iranna shows the struggle to articulate a language to explain our
origin, our destination and our collective solitude as humankind.
Even when we are together, we stand alone in tackling these
questions that concern each of us and define the nature of our
mortality. As such Iranna depicts our existence as built on frail
foundations, an existence almost broken by myriad unknowns, and
scaffolded by our search for meaning.
Scaffolding is typically used as a
noun, referring to ad hoc support structures, such as
temporary architectural platforms used during the building and
repair of an edifice (structural or social), but can also
metaphorically refer to religious beliefs, systems of social
regulation, dominant societal norms, and so on. Scaffolding can
also be used as the gerund form of the verb ‘to scaffold,’ and as
a reference to the activity or process of building a temporary
platform that supports the erection of an edifice. To talk of
Iranna’s work as “scaffolding the absent,” is to point to the way
he limns the temporary, tenuous structures of (spiritual, moral,
existential) support and meaning in his works, in order to push us
to consider the foundations that give our lives meaning and
purpose, and the possibility for existential healing.
We can see the deeper functioning
of Iranna’s “scaffolding the absent” in three major ways. First of
all, with their characteristic abstract backgrounds, devoid of
figurative, representational content, Iranna’s works embody
“neither-here-nor-there” spaces that philosopher Michel Foucault
called “heterotopias”—interstitial spaces at “the intersection of
the real and the virtual” that collapse the binary between the
two. Second, the works communicate through what post-colonial
theorist Homi K. Bhabha interprets as the “Third Space of
enunciation”—heterogeneous, hybrid, transnational and
post-national discursive spaces of cultural production. In this
way, Iranna transcends the pervasive Orientalist essentialism that
is frequently implicated in iconic representations of “Eastern”
spiritualist symbology. Finally, although nominally depicting
religious symbols, the works are not representations of Buddhism,
per se, but rather visual vehicles for exploring deeper
phenomenological human questions raised by philosophers Martin
Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and alluded to in the quotation by
Alphonso Lingis above.
Heterotopic Spaces
Using the mirror as a metaphor for spaces at
the intersection of the “real” and “virtual,” Michel Foucault
offers the concept of heterotopia. The mirror reflects a dual and
paradoxical reality—one where our reality is reflected, and the
other, where the reflection for a brief moment becomes a reality
of its own.
Iranna’s pervasive absent backdrop, the feeling of movement imbued
into static space, and his characteristic splotches sporadically
dotting the canvases, project implicit references to an external
reality that lies outside the works, performing a heterotopic
function similar to that of the Foucauldian mirror that connects
the perceived with the actual. Looking into the canvas is
homologous to what happens when we look “in the mirror,” which
Foucault describes in heterotopic terms: “I see myself there where
I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the
surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow
that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see
myself there where I am absent.”
Heterotopic spaces in
Iranna’s work are achieved through the artist’s use of
“metarealistic” visual techniques; the splotches and the absent
backdrop that engage the viewer in a mirror-like perceptual
proximity with the work. Metarealism functions as a “form which,
freed from conventionality, opens up onto the other side of
metaphor, not preceding it like a literal, lifelike image, but
embracing and transcending its figurative meaning.” The ‘meta’
prefix in the context of Iranna’s work “conjures up a reality that
opens up beyond the metaphor, to a region where metaphor carries
over or transfers its sense, beyond that empirical dimension from
whence it took off” and in doing so “metarealism earnestly tries
to capture an alternative reality.” Hence the splotches that
manifest as indentations and holes in the canvas are a metarealist
device in Iranna’s work and encompass an outer reality (ours) that
mirrors the inner realities captured within the canvas.
We, the viewers, end up being part of a collective solitude
reflected on the canvas, with mysterious splotches that seem to
pour from our space into the topos of these paintings.
An initial glance at Iranna’s
paintings might reveal a scene depicting Buddhist monks in transit
(see Bhiksu, The Valley of Red, and Red River),
yet the foreground of these images marked with splotches transfers
the depth of meaning inscribed in the works. In this body of work,
the subjects are always placed in front of an absent background
that emphasizes the presence of the subject in a layered reality.
Particularly, in Bhiksu (2011), Iranna crafts an image of
monks seeking alms in their journey over a bridge that is sutured
together and held up by nothing more than crutches. The monks are
only partially shown from the midriff down so as to stress their
movement on the canvas as they cross the precarious bridge, coming
from an unknown place and moving towards another unspecified
destination. The recurrence of splotches sporadically spattered
across the canvas gives this painting a profundity and a sense of
continuation beyond the frame. Much like Iranna’s other paintings,
this work also gives the impression of a piece in en media res,
as far as the connection between composition and the story being
told via a series of images joined on one canvas. The splotches
serve as punctuation marks for a visual discourse of alterity
(Otherness), as well as form an index of alterity to draw further
on the apparent surface reality, to modify it and extend it, and
thereby interject in the process of its signification.
In Valley of Red (2011),
innumerable monks in vermilion are gathered into a tight mass.
They face away from the viewer towards an indecipherable horizon
on a canvas speckled with several noticeable golden splotches.
This painting draws out the vastness and the expanse of human
presence when it is manifested in the collectivity and felt in the
wider spirit of a congregation. As with the other works, the
background is devoid of any discernable setting, creating a sense
of the absence of place and time, and simultaneously accentuating
the collective co-presence of the monks. The splotches are
perforations in the superficial appearance in this work as in
others and serve as points of reference or markers in the larger
movements portrayed in Iranna’s paintings.
As Foucault makes clear that
heterotopias are “intersections between real and virtual spaces,”
the splotched surface to the deeper reality of the presented
subjects, along with the absent background, marks the spatial
distance between the “real” and the “virtual” in the piece. It is
precisely the combination of these that allows these artworks to
offer metaphorical meditations on the illusory and ephemeral
nature of life and the indeterminate significance of our
existence.
Iranna’s paintings embody
heterotopia as space and subject. In Traversing the Void
(2011), the artist presents young Buddhist monks in meditation
standing in line on an orderly array of bricks that compose the
rickety, scaffolded bridge they are crossing. With a lotus flower
clasped in praying hands and a brick balanced on each of their
heads, the novice monks traverse the bridge against a green
background that is formless and void. Although their legs are not
in motion, the movement within the image is implied in the
heterotopic function of the bridge. Like the boat as a classic
example of heterotopia, due to its insular mobility, the bridge
offers a model of heterotopia inverse to that of the boat in its
transitive connectivity. Indeed the bridge, as an indexical
sign—by virtue of relations of contiguity—is always an in-between
place connecting two spaces or worlds. Similarly, the heterotopic
subject in this body of works is the Buddhist monk.
Existing on the margins of society, in a self-contained,
ritualistic space built upon shared notions of birth, death, life
and transcendence, the monk is a self-peripheralized being,
heterotopic in the manner of the boat, in “that the boat is a
floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by
itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given
over to the infinity of the sea.”
Hybrid Semantics & The “Third Space
of Enunciation”
With its hybrid visual semantics,
Iranna’s work surpasses the usual limitations of historical
reference based on a traditional or national cultural perspective.
The work strives for much more than an empirical representation of
the subject (i.e. Buddhist monks) and visual embodiment of a theme
(i.e. Buddhism). Instead, Iranna presents Buddhist monks along
with visuals of Buddhist life as a metonym for religion, belief
and faith in general as a way to introduce larger issues about our
existence, our quest for an understanding, and our need to signify
the events of our lives that shape our beings, our reality and our
limited time on earth.
In doing so, the artist evades essentialist
critical interpretations that would read his work as trope-ridden
representations of “Eastern” subjects. The immediate challenge as
an artist to employ Buddhism outside of the thematic concerns
bound to cultural context and national paradigm express an effort
to revisit the cultural significance of Buddhism in encompassing
topics that are coherent with the preoccupations of contemporary
societies. In making such adjustments Iranna seems to evoke Homi
Bhabha’s “Third Space of enunciation,” a proclamation that affirms
that “the structure of meaning and reference” is rendered as “an
ambivalent process” that “destroys” the “mirror of representation
in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed as integrated,
open, expanding,” statically positioned, unified, absolute and
total.
Of the “Third Space of enunciation,” Bhabha
writes “such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense
of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying
force, authenticated by originary Past, kept alive in the national
tradition of the People.”
Iranna’s use of images drawn from Buddhism are not meditations on
Buddhism itself, but rather these appropriations serve as an entry
point into a larger exploration of the search for faith and
meaning. As such, these paintings invoke the “Third Space of
enunciation” that is unbound from a cultural lineage, a concrete
historical past, and a determined national identity. This mode of
cultural appropriation resonates with the present context of
cultural hybridity and heterogeneity of our global societies.
In Scaffold(ing), 2011,
Iranna transcends formal categorizations as the artist
appropriates the quintessential icon of Buddhism—the golden statue
of the Buddha. Yet the countless scaffolds that suspend the statue
in the air obscure what lies within them. The work offers an
iconic sign—which represents by relations of resemblance—for the
state of human faith, around which we have thrown up so many ad
hoc support structures that we can hardly make out what lies
beneath. The result is a reincarnation of cultural signs
elaborated in a contemporary paradigm to reveal open spaces for
contemplation and exploration, which is the core of what we might
call a “Buddhist phenomenology.”
Buddhism as a Metonymical Vector
for Phenomenological Interventions
Iranna’s work dialogues with
phenomenological preoccupations regarding the nature of Being. “I
wanted to capture our ruptured faith, our broken values and the
incompleteness of these in contemporary societies, and Buddhism
was just the vehicle to do so,” he explains. As such, one could
characterize Iranna as a phenomenological painter. Central to
phenomenology is the belief that in a world bereft of coherent
external meaning, we must each confront the big questions and come
up with the answers ourselves. Iranna poises his subjects over the
abyss of these questions, and the individual inward path towards
transcendence and Becoming provides the segue between Buddhism and
Phenomenology. Even as we are together, in the search for meaning
we are ultimately always alone. Thus the collective solitude of
the monks shown in some of the paintings exposes our mortality,
which is bracketed by points of aperture (birth) and closure
(death) that engulf life to reveal the fragility of our existence
and the absence of a functional support system or structure to
give that existence meaning. This resonates with Martin
Heidegger’s writings that present ‘the question of Being’ in terms
of aperture (in its open-ended willingness to seek an answer
perpetually) and closure (in its willingness to be finite and
determined) as well.
The visual lexicon of scaffolding, crutches
and sutures in Iranna’s paintings are a “recognition of our
vulnerability, [and] our mortality,” which phenomenologist
Alphonso Lingis described. But more than presenting existence as
an unanswered, ambiguous question, unconditionally delimited by
our mortality, and thus an overwhelming and traumatizing
phenomenon, the scaffolding, crutches and sutures in the works
show attempts to heal these traumas through faith in spite of the
epistemological uncertainty and fundamental unknowability of the
putative objects of our faiths. Herein lies the core power of
Iranna’s recent paintings. In re-engaging the concerns underlying
Heidegger’s “the question of the meaning of Being,” the artist
addresses what philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the human
condition.” Arendt argues that central to the human condition are
three existential facts that we all share: our “natality”—that we
are inserted into a world not of our making through birth; our
“mortality”—that we die and that our time on earth is finite; and
our irreducible, common “plurality”—that the unique stories of
each of our lives are both made by each of us and also make us
singularly who we are. Moreover, according to Arendt, these three
facts create the basis for empathy and solidarity as we manifest
ourselves in this world, narrating and writing the stories of our
lives and defining ourselves through speech and action before a
community of others.
Here Arendt breaks with Heidegger’s bleak phenomenology, which
fixates on our mortality. Instead Arendt offers a vision of
generative power, which valorizes the human capacity for action,
meaning-making, and new beginnings.
In works such as Red River
(2011) and Valley of Red (2011), the crowd of monks mirrors
humankind as a collectivity determined by these facts of our
natality, mortality, and plural uniqueness. By coming together in
word and deed we can constitute public spaces before the gaze of
the community. In The Red River (2011), a sort of panning
movement across the canvas brings a collective mass of monks into
focus, creating the visual effect of motion. With its subjects
moving diagonally downwards like a flowing river, the piece
inherits the density and fluidity of water. The backdrop is
indecipherable, giving the image present an enduring sense of
time, and Iranna’s trademark splotch marks divert more
conventional linear readings or interpretations of the scene. The
artist’s metonymical use of tranquil Buddhist monks en masse
suggests that although we pass through life on an inherently
feeble ground, the acceptance of our mortality and the celebration
of life as a gradual movement toward death can be transformed into
a path towards existential healing. As the monks appear meditative
with their eyes closed, conveying the force of the group expressed
through a sense of togetherness, the painting evokes Arendt’s
generative power as a source of hope for the human condition.
Conclusion
Multiple layers of absence are
present in this recent body of work by G.R. Iranna. Absence
appears in the phenomenological sense as the absence of
explanations and definite answers to the questions of existence.
It resides in the spatio-temporal dislocation of the figures
against the heterotopic space constituted by the absence of
background and foregrounded perforations in the surface appearance
of the works. Indeed, heterotopia makes absence into a space of
possibility. Absence appears in his paintings in the more
literally Buddhist sense as absence of desire, longing, struggle,
manifesting as transcendence in the search for meaning. Visually
there is also an absence of horizons; there are paths but no
destinations. Sometimes there is an absence of faces, or facial
expressions, and the monks are depicted on a journey with an
unknown destination, traveling upon the most fragile and unsteady
of supports—bridges cobbled together with metal sutures, held up
by wobbly crutches, as if to question whether the structures of
faith available to us can actually support the weight of the human
condition.
From a diversity of
perspectives—that of heterotopic spatial discourse engendered by
metarealistic techniques, as well as the hybrid “Third Space of
enunciation”—Iranna’s work performs the function of “scaffolding
the absent,” deconstructing the very elements it formally offers,
and bringing the latent instability of the invisible structures
underlying them to our attention. Thus Iranna offers a
“scaffolding of the absent;” a temporary structural outline of
that which is invisible within the frame, but contextually present
in its visible absence, and in doing so, he asks us to reflect
upon our human predicament and consider the possibilities for
healing our existential wounds.
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