The Force of the Invisible

Posted by admin on December 13th, 2006 filed in art

I have been interested in the work of sculptor Jonathan Schipper for a while now. Here are a few notes on a couple of his pieces that I am periodically working on and refiguring. Be sure to check out his setting of Slayer’s Raining Blood, and Opposition.

Invisibility is one thread that can be traced through his work, and that is what the notes below are attempting to do. There will probably be more on Schipper here a little further down the line.

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What much of Schipper’s work shows us is the force of the invisible. Two pieces that seem to exemplify his engagements with invisibility are Invisible Jet and 215 Points of View.

Invisible Jet

There are (at least) two ways that it is tempting to read Invisible Jet. The capsule within which the body is encased is clear (another failed attempt at invisibility) giving the appearance of a subject in ritualistic devotion. This posture is, however, forced, constrained within the transparent shell or frame that surrounds the flesh. The subject is here a crustacean of sorts whose diaphanous shell or exoskeleton obscures the flesh yet provides the Symbolic support necessary for its social being, for its ability to function within an established social order. The same could perhaps be said of Swing Set, that it is the machinic framework which works upon the flesh that constitutes these works as such and not only a display and enjoyment of nudity, making them acceptable and meaningful to a gallery audience.

Alternatively, Invisible Jet can be seen as a deformation. The always bodily deformation is stationary, exposing the intensive force of change and disqualifying movement as effect. The body in this sense is not to be thought of as constrained, despite appearances, but undergoing reorganization according to the force which is exerted upon and runs throughout it. The process of deformation is distinct to the transformative in that it is primarily embodied, a folding inwards, a static metamorphosis, rather than a branching outward.

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215 Points of View

215 Points of View (attempt at an invisible sphere) can almost be seen as a frame for all of his other works. A trajectory is suggested that aims at an invisible image of perfection. This not-yet invisible sphere points towards Symbolic mediation, towards the attainment of perfection in diaphanousness and the polarization or opposition of the sensible. Its presence draws out the inherent mediation in ‘invisible’ forces, in the symbolic frame which, despite having set its sights on rational transparency, colours and refracts in the process of making obsolete the material structure towards the appearance of meaning. There is, in these repeated attempts at invisibility, a joyous futility at work. The striving for invisibility maintains and relies upon the impossibility of the notion in which it is grounded. It is an exercise in impossibility that presents a certain enjoyment in the form of the sphere, in endlessness and a goal that is always out of reach. This repetitive form is driven by the enjoyment of the unobtainable, an enjoyment of the approach to rather than the attainment of the object at the heart of 215: invisibility. The gap between the goal of these works and the means by which it might be attained is closed off, the process becomes ritualized and therein lies its purpose; enjoyment is found in the repeated failure of each attempt made for the unobtainable. There is desire not for the object itself but for the process through which it might (not) be obtained.

There is a general resistance to the logical reduction of the sensible toward meaning. 215 might be said to affirm the separation of the two and the gap which prevents their amalgamation. The gaze passes around the surface of the object, not through it, and is released at the other side. Its invisibility is more a deflection; the object possesses a polar charge which maintains the distance between the looking at and the experience of the object in its attempted confusion with the material structure. We are looking at the object, yet its meaning exists only in the order of rationality that seeks to render its materiality obsolete. Meaning here relies upon its own constraint within its native order, within the appearance of its invisible image. This separation of orders, through the framing and mediation of the object, maintains it and its quality as such. Meaning and its objects are of radically dissimilar orders: meaning circulates the object, passes around its surface, and maintains a safe distance, avoiding the meaninglessness of the object itself. The orders, levels or thresholds of meaning are mediated by a minimal distance, the framework of invisibility.

In looking at this piece we see looking acted out. We look and what we see is what lies beyond, ‘as if’ it were not there. This piece is doing the looking for us, even before we look at it; it presents an asubjective gaze and makes possible the act of looking at looking itself, it renders the invisible gaze. In this rendering, the inconsistency of the invisible it flagged up, the invisible force that ensures the validity of the rational order of things is identified as an object and not the neutral framing of reality. Schipper’s work directs our attention to the inconsistency in invisibility, in the rational transparency which seeks to enable an understanding of the ‘true’ meaning of an object, act or thing. What, at a slightly ‘deeper’ level, this is telling us is that what we see is not necessarily what really exists, what we see is always in some sense mediated by what we think and the search for meaning in what we see. The invisible force or power that assures the stability of reality is itself inconsistent, assembled, and susceptible to refraction in the search for meaning and there is in fact no invisible power that provides these assurances and guarantees their consistency.