I AFFECT, THEREFORE I AM

There is a difference between referential and non-referential works of art.

A referential work of art, such as, for instance a painting with a realistic, religious motive, possesses its own context of notions and signs which are tied to a frame of reference: religion. The "signs" or symbols in such an art work represent the interpretation of textual matter. Apart from formal analyses, one analyses the motive, the iconography.

In opposition to this are the non-referential art works, such as "20:50", "Studio 016", or "Project Room South", in which the concepts are represented through "abstract statements". These abstract statements are not initially linguistic.The works of art are activated through 'abstract statements' which are the result of the 'machinic techniques'. They do not reject the linguistic construction, but they do obstruct it. The textual alone is not sufficient, experience is of primary importance.

"An abstract statement", however, can be the basic stimulus for a linguistic construction. Once the linguistic construction is carried through, then the "abstract statement" itself becomes a reference.

It is not my intention to incorporate linguistic elements into non-referential works of art, but to expose that which causes the effectiveness of an art work: its inter-relations. For this reason the following text is not an analysis of works, but a textualisation of inter-relations, which produce different effects.

When I use, in the specified works of art, the term "abstract", I do not equate it to the abstraction used in a Purist or Modern sense. On those levels the abstraction consists of reduction of the fixed, formal and crucial points. The abstraction used in terms of related objects, however, is introduced in the very opposite way: in a productive, generative, innovative and expansive way.

Let me give an example in which I can describe the difference between the abstraction of the Minimal art object and the abstraction of creations by Richard Wilson or Apolonija Šušteršič. The abstraction of the Minimal art object results from the process of reduction which pushes the formal, textual or signifying essences to their very limits. The result is the emptying. The result itself, when it is attained is single - layered. It is pure.

The discussed works ("20:50", "Studio 016" and "Project Room South"), however, resist the reductive approach, and tend to be basic and elementary themselves. It is this very reason which allows them to work.