A Remote Province: Between the Visible and the Sayable

Abstract

The following thesis investigates the idea and practice of my painting from the point of view of the uncanny - that "remote province" characterized by Martin Heidegger as a paradoxical union of emerging and not emerging, concealment and unconcealment; described by Sigmund Freud as the way "back to what is known of old and long familiar" (220); and that Paul Celan reminds us is also the way of the abyss of heaven underfoot - the abyss that opens up the earth (Selected Poems and Prose, 407). Chapter 1, "Analytic of Forms: An Attempt at Self-Criticism", provides a critical and typological analysis, subdividing my work into two principle categories or genres: abstract/landscape and still image. Chapter 2, "A Remote Province", situates the idea and practice of my painting in relation to broader theoretical currents that aim to elaborate a conception of the work of art as uncanny, provisional, and poetic. Assuming with Jacques Ranci?Àre that every image presents a fold within the order of the visible and the sayable, I liken my approach to painting to a poetic practice of provisional naming and crossing out of names oriented towards what Heidegger calls the earth as opposed to the world