ELI DINER
painting - printmaking
BETWEEN PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION
The most hidden thing in any attempt to represent reality is reality itself because the only actual phenomena in this attempt are the means to achieve representation and they fill up the whole sheet, canvas or space of representation.
Any artistic image denotes or is symbolic of a kind of reality and is comprehended by the spectator thanks to the use of implicit artistic stratagems. When the means used by the artist become explicit, representation itself becomes less transparent and introverted. It talks only about itself.
Without those stratagems representation cannot exist and without representation we cannot understand our world. That is why any attempt to represent something requires, in my opinion, a clear reference to the representational means in use. In painting that means that the artist is required to foreground his materials and his brushstroke because those are the only things that really exist on the canvas ...
Eli Diner