Title:
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Deleuze and painting : re-thinking the formal
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This is a practice-led PhD and the submission includes a written thesis and a
comprehensive body of paintings made during the research period. The initial
aim of this research developed out of an interest in what appeared to be a clear
binary opposition between the structure and understanding of the picture plane
within abstract and figurative painting. Traditionally a figurative picture plane
tends to achieve pictorial depth through Cartesian perspective. Conversely,
abstract picture planes were flattened within modernism. I am interested in
creating a pictorial space in painting - image painted on canvas - that has the
potential to accommodate a more active viewer. This is a pictorial space in which
the surface and pictorial depth do not sit in opposition to each other and the
viewer oscillates between the two.
The research initiated with a historical survey of pictorial space specifically
analysing the difference between Renaissance and modernist space. The
research methodology then develops key concepts from Gilles Deleuze's
philosophical writings. They are employed within the studio as a system of
methods, which have enabled me to re-think the formal characteristic of painting
towards creating a new pictorial model. The key concepts within this investigative
methodology include: The Fold; Smooth and Striated space in relation to Beauty
and Sublime; The Monad; The Figural; and The Virtual. A central premise of the
research, both practically as a studio investigation in painting and theoretically,
explores the potential of the internal pictorial plane of painting becoming a virtual,
complex and plural space more akin to the cinematic. Giles Deleuze's concept of
'The Fold' is at the core of the research and provides a method of thinking
through a studio painting practice that might reactivate painterly, abstract and
pictorial space for a contemporary audience.
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