Antonio Puri



The Arc of Gnosis

Shaheen Merali

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.

Installtion from La Cometa Gallery in Bogota, Colombia 2019