"What seems, at the seam" : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

This exegesis investigates what emerges out of hybrid references to artists of the first half of the 20th century as a way to inspire a sense of painting's specificity in my practice. Within the overlap of architecture, site, drawing, installation, and the exhibition, small, reflective encounters with painting’s spatio-conceptual meaning are explored as they exist now, after the avant garde of abstraction, minimalism and conceptualism. Philosophical ideas guide a non-strategic method of making art that uses abstract thinking as a way to encounter an agentic capacity from art and art making. This research studies the possibilities and impossibilities of an existentialist view of materiality as it applies to painting where substance and form manifest qualities of ideas and feeling. I evoke from language a grammatical register of comprehension beyond the rational, allowing words, objects or images do their own thinking. This is what I understand to be a pragmatic poetic.