Meet Art of Antonio Puri

Is  the problem that we still lack some essential connection with works of  art that are non-representational or is it rather that we examine the  non-representational in order  to be informed by its mimesis, an  imitation of reality, which as Plato suggested ‘place(s) a value on  art’. The artists who pursue  the depiction of that which is outside of the senses, in the realm of  transcendent forms or structures and towards gnosis, are actively  pursuing a range beyond normality, dismissive of trompe l’oeil, however,  elaborate. These artists are seen as speculators of the unseen, the  unheard, the untouched, the unscented and the un-tasted. Susan Sontag  argues the works of art by these artists are “above and beyond”, they  become “problematic, in need of defence.”  Antonio  Puri is one such artist for he pursues within an unknown realm,  suggesting he chooses to work within an untested range of ideas. As  such, Puri’s activity seems to (dis)regard the pleasure of the known  senses of the viewer, who is often perplexed as to the final meaning of  the image. In the inability to finalise what is made visual, the viewer  remains in a state best described as ‘in assumption’ or in philosophical  terms it could be ‘it postulates’.

In  rendering beyond clear grasp, as in 15 maquetas de 100 vidas, the  artist portrays or even substitutes experience (as a form of clarity)  for a representative set of marks that still creates an image but  retains its codified impetus. Puri substitutes our expectations of an  image with a series of emblematic traces that leave us somewhat  perplexed.  We lose our place in its proximity.  Here again, the idea  rises as to how, in losing our ability to make complete sense of the  painting in a certain context, is Sontag right to suggest we turn to  defend it? Or is  the place of the less lucidly realistic art a place to  which we turn in order to understand the mysterious or the mysteries in  our lives.  In this way, the work of art becomes a vantage point for  un-essentialised knowledge.  Clearly,  in the majority of Puri’s works, there remains a relationship to  gravity, to flow and to natural passages between the elements, for these  are created from the combination of elements that create a Stack  (2018-19) and from the place of architectural structure in the works  that explore the accordion form as in the recent,  large scale grid-like  formation, lengua negra triptico (2019). I would like to suggest herein  lies the possibility to think about the architectonic space between  gnosis and the painting's harmonious ability to define its structure. 

Antonio  Puri has pursued and consistently found in his paintings, as well as in  his drawings and prints, a place to organise the marks that seem to be  derived from nature or the landscape, to create images that disturb the  hegemony of (human) figurative representation. He is neither alone nor  estranged by committing himself to this way of organising information.  In many ways, he is devoted to demonstrating a certain sensitivity, even  if this requires creating within the place of obtuse perspectives. In  the modern era, the natural form, as a language, remains difficult for  an urban art audience to fathom as even its finest artists turn to  nature to sublimate trapped sexual energies.  Such innuendos are seen in  works including David Hockney’s the Bigger Splash or Georgia O'Keeffe’s  Flower series. These instances take the trace of water or the place of  fauna,  to suggest knowledge of lives that matter yet remain either  illegal, punished or undermined. In  these works, mainly from the 1950’s and later concluding in the Land  Art of the late 80’s, the natural is made to serve the allegorical. The  human is re-designated inside or beside nature, as the spectral modern  expatriates starts to be confined in the new geometries of neo-geo or  minimalist plateaux.  We  return to nature in the geological turn that begins to define its  anthropocene. In the following decades to the new century it is  important to remember, that we all abruptly arrive in a time when it  becomes pertinent to address and adjust to the fact that the microscopic  and macrocosm are both part of nature. And the universal entropy  defines our imperfect behaviours in our postponed future. 

Within  the modern visual arts tradition, it would be obvious to deconstruct  Puri’s works in more modernist representational formats.  Such formats  are highlighted by any of the previous movements in the arts, from Pop  to minimal artists, including those working in the formal arrangements  of the grid, or the repetitive format of the rectangular ‘landscape’  space of Puri’s paintings. This  seems to be part of the intriguing nature of Puri’s work. Although Puri  uses similar formats to the minimalists, including the use of series  and serialisations, the format does not necessarily confine the image,  which floats towards the surface like many of the Pop artists’ collages  and paintings. The many works in this exhibition, Visiones en concreto  seem to be considering the limitation of past styles and the innovations  which he often suggests are still possible, as a notation of progress.   Prominent within this realm is the notion of expanse that he  predominantly explores as prevalent in lengua negra en roja (2019). The  red marks float like stains above and within a grid and the rectangular  is treated as a given format for artists nowadays, who are obliged to  work with recent innovation that continues to reverberate today. The  work is both an absorption and an observation of the standardisation of  sizes and shapes of artists materials; yet lengua negra en roja forces  an unfamiliarity with its disciplinary parallax. The conceptual and  artistic ideas deny a complete translation of this work for even a  frontal examination of the work is denied. Sontag has stated, “And,  conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to  interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing  as the content of a work of art.”  The  act of translation is devolved, for Puri insists you treat it as a  sculpture, a shrine, a pause.  One needs to walk around the arc of the  ‘painting’ to read its art as both art history and the history of  viewing (art), as Puri has explained in the past, is partly based on the  Indian idea of a ‘darshan’ which can be best explained as a point of  viewing.  The etymological meaning of the Sanskrit, Darsana, is the  auspicious sight of a deity or a holy person (or image thereof).

These  are not mere visual tricks or puns but the escapades of an artist who  is engaged in reordering the ordered privilege of looking and  translating. I return to Sontag’s initial idea of the artist in need of  defense, which seems to suggest a form of rescue. How does one reconcile  the production of the non-representational and the production of the  ‘out of kilter’ unless the place of the non-representational (as well as  the space where art is engaged including the gallery, the museum and  the ideals that lead to the canonisation which includes the market, the  collector and the critic), are collectively in agreement about its lack  of cultural value. In an era  dependent on competitive inflation, and a globalisation in antagonism  mode, cultural value itself becomes inflated, herein any soteriology  (the doctrine of salvation, and the viewing of salvation) can but carry  on offering an incomplete view of our understanding of the notion of  salvation. 

Antonio’s  work has this unspoken power, which could be regarded as a form of  prowess.  in some of the works he deliberately delights and  demonstrates, for an eager art audience, the confidence of a surface  that has freshness, like an unsullied inked plate ready to be applied to  a printing press. The work asserts its power without having to make  spectacles or giving any pretence to a popular language. In such  preciousness lies the way for the eyes to smoulder and linger in the  depths of its pitch blacks or swim along with its greys, often  tantalised by sumptuous palimpsests of colour fields. Puri’s work can  make one Think Aloud as a response to what you are not simply given as  an explanation. For, in these works, Puri stages an intrigue that  fosters and produces deliberate intentions to beguile.

Morning Rainbow

A halo of transfigured light

spanned the hills and autumn gold

of scores of aspen groves

basking in the morning sun.

But what is this thing we call a rainbow?

For all our science talk of vapor,

refraction and angle of the sun

we surrender still in willing captivity

to its beauty, mystery and myth.

Rainbows beguile by their fleeting rarity 

as ephemeral as life itself -

temporal blessings suspended in time 

unintended and undeserved,

spectral bridges between here and there -

between what is and what should be.

                                                            Robert C Howard Nov 2016

Here  and there seems to be the very centre of the works, as we must move  between the works and into the arc of each piece.  Antonio Puri defines  for many of us a place from where to begin to acknowledge what we should  always remain acknowledging and what that needs in order to replace the  why we are so diffident in viewing this world and its suspended  meanings/ spaces.  Herein  we can start to acknowledge and to work towards understanding that  there is a great deal more remaining which needs to be silently dropped  from constant translation, to be slowly deaccessioned from our  knowledge-bases. If we keep on  treating the non-representational as a series of clues which provide  clarity so to activate certain narratives, many constellations will  remain trapped on paper and canvas surfaces. Essentially, the works in  this exhibition are the deeds of many characters committed by one  person, other than himself, the artist.  Puri portrays a galactic  constellation, the macrocosmic,  through his physical work, locating in  his experience a spiritual cycle of making and initiating from the  fundamentals of language.  

Allured  by the not-reading of the work of art, we enter a transformational  stage, breathe in its power, find its nature and source, understand its  pitch, its death and the resurrection of an idea. To be a better judge  of the heroism of our mind (by letting go of its constantly translating  mode), we must allow the imagination its journey towards an unshaped  world evolved outside cultural production. Such  a formation and departure within art, is the temptation Puri places  before the audience. For these are not logical conferences, nor do they  intend to establish an aesthetic admiration, but rather they ask us to  try to discover beyond that which is concurrently retained as the  figuratively imagined.

These  works by Antonio Puri make us as viewers the creatures of the  unconscious, in a controlled realm of light and darkness that he  assimilates into powerful and associative spaces.

Puri  is a partner who provides an opportunity, a maverick, creative spirit,  aiming to evoke our higher nature through motifs, mysterious  edges,collective darkness, suspended-time in the acquiesced lodge. In  the elevated fields away from our local lives, his work provides a  zest, new paths with different demystifications made visible. The vital  person vitalises the world.  This is no easy job, but arises from the  reward of sharing and teaching from unveiled fear. Puri’s cultural-tropics are a life led by a visual meditation, held in place by  colours on planes of paper or taut canvas.