The signs and allegories created by the artist do not exist in isolation. They inhabit a space that contains them and establishes relationships between them. This space is a projection of our inner space of representation, in which the position of each element and its relationship with the others are never indifferent. To understand the allegorical meanings of two-dimensional space, we must, as at every stage, observe and question the different sensations it evokes according to the placement of forms on the page.
Forms as organisers of space
In an “empty” space there are no tensions. But as soon as we place a form within it, that form becomes a point of reference for our gaze. If we add other forms, different kinds of relationships, tensions and movements emerge.
A form inhabits two spaces: its own internal space and the space of its relationship with its surroundings.
In the first and second workshops, we experienced how forms express different kinds of energy. Forms, as human creations, arise from a change in an energetic state. In drawing and painting, they begin with a sensory experience of the world, are then processed by consciousness and are finally impressed upon a surface once again. At every stage in the development of form, energy circulates as impulses: they originate in the world, are perceived by the senses, processed by consciousness and eventually transmitted through the body onto a surface. Form is the outcome of movement, of a dynamic energetic force in constant transformation.
What matters to us at this stage is that the dynamics of a form do not cease when it becomes “fixed” on a support or within a field. Those dynamics continue in the observer and are nourished by the form's relationship with space and with other forms.
There is therefore an inner dynamic, connected with the experiences that gave rise to the form; an outer dynamic within the field; and a third dynamic that continues in the observer. We are thus looking at something apparently static which, in reality, has its own process, its own life and its own soul.
Forms always exist within a space. Without them, that space—canvas, paper or any other support—would have no meaning. Our task is to give meaning not only to forms but also to the space itself. Space becomes alive, animated by the forms that constitute its contents and give it a history of lived experience. Think, for example, of the home in which you live. You may believe it is defined by its walls, but empty walls have no “life”. What animates the space are your objects, charged with energy and meaning: they shape and design it. Such a space is rich in contents, affections and meanings. We are not interested in Cartesian space but in living space, where events unfold and phenomena and formal behaviours manifest themselves.
We distinguish two kinds of space: the space in which the work is made—the flat, two-dimensional support or field that receives the image—and an illusory, three-dimensional space represented within the image.
We call the first the “Field” and the second the “Space of Representation”.
In this workshop we will analyse and study the Field; in the next workshop we will turn to the Space of Representation.
Artistic and Technical Objectives
To understand the relationship between form and space. To study composition and field theory. To use technology in the service of artistic creation.
Existential Objectives
To understand the correspondences between forms arranged in space and mental and emotional contents.
Spiritual Objectives
To connect with our essence as “spatial” beings, who exist in and through the space in which we can fulfil our needs.
Workshop Topics: Forms as organisers of space; two-dimensional space: the Field; the phenomenology of perception; formal composition; field theory and symbolism; visual laws; the laws of contrast; hidden space: the concealed action of the symbol; points of attention; the grid.