From Per Aage Brandt to Morten B. Masri:

Why?

Why paint anything at all? Here is a canvas – it ends here and here and here and here. Where does it begin? And where does the image formation begin? Why does it begin at all? Why does it stop?
One thinks: We go on producing pictures because this activity is one of the most basic things we have at our disposal to let each other share in what we imagine – in the way that we imagine it.
But one also thinks: besides language, dancing, and music, that which we call painting – or, more broadly, visual art – is a necessary component in every individual’s encounter with the world. That is how we view it, sub-objectively.
And finally one thinks: We notice pressure from language’s urge to speak, the body’s urge to dance, the notes’ urge to sound in our ears – and the pressure from the mind’s urge to produce images calls for a certain ‘imaging’ activity from hand and eye. That inner pressure can only be alleviated by an outer expression. A pressure to express. An ‘expressure’.
These are three theories about the same thing, or suggestions for answers to the same question. Perhaps they work together, perhaps not. We have many impulses with a parallel pulse inside our heads, and they can easily cancel each other out. There is no governance, for the mind is not a system – and hardly a state.
I am coming to believe that a general aesthetic pressure exists in every individual, irrespective of how it finds expression. If it expresses itself in at least one field, we can live. If it does not find any form of expression, the person himself or herself becomes expressed.
Painting came into being as something mystical: When we meet the inner in the outer – which we do – when, in a kind of trance, we experience our own or each other’s expression as external events, as messages that initiate us into a world that opens up on the basis of precisely these external expressions, we have – or undergo – a mystical experience. We mystify ourselves – so to speak – and each other as soon as we experience content via its expression, in such a way that precisely this expression becomes the entrance to precisely this content.
The secret, the sacred, is that which has only one entrance: this image, this stone, this text. This work. Other parts of the world have many entrances and are therefore profane and pragmatic, but this only has one, and its peculiarity, singularity, is its work-ness – its reality. Singularity is the origin of transcendence as well as of aesthetics. Transcendence means both abandonment and criticism: here is the transfigured world – it lies behind the actual image, and it calls or warns, just as dreams do, for they too are singular.
We know the effect of such statements as: “listen carefully, you will only hear this once”. That is what lies in the signature as the full stop of the work: the name is – as Rimbaud ought to have said – an other. I, on the other hand, am the same, since I repeat myself. The work is the other’s. Full stop.

 

L'Azur

Fra Per Aage Brandt til Morten B. Masri.

Hvorfor?

Hvorfor male noget som helst? Her er et lærred; det ender her og her og her og her. Hvor begynder det? Og hvor begynder billeddannelsen? Hvorfor begynder den overhovedet? Hvorfor slutter den?
Man tænker: Vi bliver ved med at frembringe billeder, fordi denne aktivitet er en af de mest grundlæggende ting, vi har til vores rådighed for at delagtiggøre hinanden i det, vi forestiller os, sådan som vi forestiller os det.
Men man tænker også: ved siden af sproget, dansen og musikken er det, vi nu kalder maleriet eller bredere, billedkunsten, en nødvendig komponent i ethvert menneskes møde med verden. Sådan ser vi den, sub-objektivt.
Og endelig tænker man: Vi mærker et pres fra sprogets taletrang, fra kroppens dansetrang, fra tonernes trang til at klinge i vores ører; og presset fra sindets billedtrang fordrer en vis ”bildende” aktivitet fra hånd og øje. Det indre pres kan kun lindres ved et ydre udtryk. Udtrykspres.
Det er tre teorier om samme sag, eller forslag til svar på det samme spørgsmål. Måske arbejder de sammen, måske ikke. Vi har mange impulser pulserende parallelt i vores hoveder, og de kan let modsige hinanden. Der er ingen regering, for sindet er ikke et system og næppe en stat.
Jeg begynder at tro, at der eksisterer et generelt æstetisk pres i ethvert menneske, hvordan det så end kommer til udtryk. Hvis det i det mindste udtrykker sig på ét felt, kan vi leve. Hvis det slet ikke kommer til udtryk, bliver personen selv udtrykket.
Maleriet blev til som en mystik: når vi møder det indre i det ydre, hvilket vi gør, når vi i en slags trance oplever vores egne eller hinandens udtryk som eksterne begivenheder og meddelelser, der indvier os i en verden, som åbner sig netop udfra disse eksterne udtryk, har vi eller gør vi en mystisk erfaring. Vi mystificerer os selv, så at sige, og hinanden, så snart vi oplever et indhold gennem dets udtryk, således at dette udtryk bliver indgangen til netop dette indhold.
Det hemmelige, det hellige, er det, der kun har én indgang: dette billede, denne sten, denne tekst. Dette værk. Andre verdensdele har mange indgange og er derfor profane og pragmatiske; men denne har kun én, og dens ejendommelighed, singulariteten, er dens værk-elighed, virkelighed. Singulariteten er transcendensens oprindelse, såvel som æstetikkens. Transcendensen betyder både hengivelse og kritik: her er den transfigurerede verden - bag selve billedet ligger den, og den kalder eller advarer, ligesom drømmene gør, for også de er singulære.
Vi kender effekten fra udsagn som: “Hør nu efter, du vil kun høre dette én gang.” Det er det, der ligger i signaturen som værkets punktum; navnet er, som Rimbaud burde have sagt, en anden. Jeg er derimod den samme, idet jeg gentager mig. Værket er den andens. Punktum.

 

 

Morten B. Masri  ‘Peintures pour aveugles’

Larmgalleri June 4 - July 12, 2014

In his work, Morten B. Masri investigates the complex question of perception and sensual experience, and how we as human beings perceive the visual in a seemingly indeterminate space. His intriguing paintings embody a matrix of imagined past and present, artificiality and reality, memory and history. They are explorations of imagery and the image-making process. His paintings enact a balancing act in which the overt subject (the figures) and the implicit subject (the question of painting and what it might mean) co-exist.
Masri’s work teet on the edge of tradition and innovation; the pictures float in and out of pictorial genres. Still lifes become personified and landscapes become constructions. He embraces the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive. The atmosphere in Masri’s painting is contemplative and still, yet at any moment you expect the stillness to be startled. But then perhaps startling their own stillness is what good paintings do best; they let you expect the things you don’t expect to see.

‘Paintings for the Blind’ runs concurrents with Morten B. Masri’s EXIT graduation show at Kunsthal Charlottenborg

Morten B. Masri lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

LARMgalleri
Bredgade 73
1260 Copenhagen K