Title:
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The construction, role and interpretation of reflexivity within contemporary non-representational painting
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This study will be undertaken in order to investigate how the candidate's nonrepresentational paintings produced over the length of the programme become figured reflexively. The research will examine the common assertion that a reflexive nonrepresentational painting is identifiable as such because it only works to call attention to itself. Because of the causal connection between the historical framework of modernism and the development of novel forms of painting, the first half of this dissertation will attempt to disentangle the pluiality of discourses that collectively sought to address painting's interiority. Specifically, it will seek to explore the modernist claim that by being hypostatised, non-representational painting could become conceived within singular terms. Once the historical framework has been mapped out, the second half of the dissertation will begin by attempting to identify the locus where the construction of reflexivity occurs withm the candidate's artworks. Through the identification of reflexivity's generative locus, the study will ask whether it is possible to counter the claims made for the artwork by modernism and conceive non-representational painting within differential, i.e., divisible terms. Attemptmg to conceive the candidate's artworks in terms of its divisibility, the study will explore how specific roles or functions become ascribed to each series by its reflexive condition. By these reflexive roles attributing 'meaning' to the object, the study will also examine the way this has been interpreted by artists and critics in order to maintain a fidelity to the material register of the object. Fmally, these reflexive roles will be examined in order to understand how they inform the negotiation of the candidate's artworks within a wider field of critical practice. From this examination, an account will be put forward in terms of how the candidate's artworks rethink the conditions of possibility for reflexive non-representational pamting today. Through this, the research has been carried out in order to establish a critical study of the construction, role and interpretation of reflexivity within contemporary nonrepresentational painting.
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