Ceci n'est pas un embrayage, 2021. R7400

Acrylic on canvas, 405 x 305mm (image size). Unframed.
 
These works are from the Matrix series and deal with the idea of an ‘Other’ space: Simulated, embodied, dynamic and different to the experienced, physical real. It is presented as constructions and connected spaces, and as fictional. On one hand, matrixial space could be virtual space that we inhabit as human cyborgs; on the other hand it could be any other kind of ‘world’, dream or condition; or it could even be utopian space. On one hand, it could be virtual space that human cyborgs inhabit; on the other hand it could be any other kind of ‘world’, dream or condition; or it could even embody utopian space. Sometimes a constructed matrix seems so real that it becomes intertwined with the physical real. It is constituted by relationships, wishes, emotions and connections; it is volatile and can change from moment to moment. New matrixes are constantly birthed since human beings continue to create these within the physical boundaries of time.
On René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (La Trahison des images, 1929), the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (this is not a pipe) are written. The artist sets up play with illusionism through a representation that is not an actual pipe but an image of a pipe; so reality and certainty become questioned. Presenting an illusion of the real is probably art’s most fundamental ontology, since an image is nothing more than an illusion presented in such a way as to disguise its fictive status. Magritte‘s work brings into play the fusion of the real and illusion. Jacques Derrida has gone so far as to argue that both presence and self are illusions (dealt with in my Ceci n’est pas … series). In matrix creation, the boundary between the projective illusion or virtual matrix and the physical real mostly disappears.