The Aesthetics of Affect

"Art Operates as a fissure in representation, and we as spectators as representational creatures are involved in a dance with art, a dance in which through careful manoeuvres - the molecular is opened up, the aesthetic is activated and art does what is its chief modus operandi it transforms, if only for a moment, our sense of our "selves" and our notion of the world."  

I see this quote important in terms of my practice, it is through the viewers movement and connection with the works that makes them come alive. From every viewer point a new form will emerge or recede on the surface of the paint, creating a subtle optical shift. I see this as an aesthetic of the work operating through light and shadow. It "transforms a sense of ourselves" I think for me this peice of writing becomes important through this engagement both in making and viewing, I repeat my process over and over again, yet the paintings never become what was intended, through this failure and absurdity it becomes about how far as an artist I want to exhausted this material and move onto the next and through making it is an engagement with oneself placed in the world, the paints call out for attention yet not so much load mouthed, they speak softly, charming the viewers with their colours, yet they are far from being perfect, they displace a certain amount of elegance as they are propped up right on the wall.

I intend the viewers thoughts to linger in the depths of their minds as they become some what as the banality of the everyday, things that go misplaced, or lost for many year are recoiled and displayed as an abstract form. 

I will leave you with another quote that I also found interesting from the same text by Simon O'sullivan which also make connections with the paragraph I have written above.
"The work of art is a block of sensations, that is to say, a compound of percepts and affects. Percepts are no longer perceptions: they are independent of the state of those who experience them...They go beyound the strength of those who undergo them. Sensation, percepts and affects are beings whose validity lies in themselves and exceeds any lived." Affects are not one to be pinned down to one definition it is much more than a sensation it is something this is unlocked through the viewer as the artwork then reveals its Secret "affect."