The aim of this one-time experiment called „Hypostasicisms“ was to emerge into the so called Neoplatonic metaphysics, to very practically concentrate on the possible applications of their most idealistic discourses as on the understanding of the forces of the universes with their distinct spheres, in between spiritual movements, gravitations and attractions, the separations of times and the different worlds in general and in the particulars on observing the sphere of the here and now during the moments of creation in the production of the works exhibited. Zooming down these Neoplatonic inspirations and models, down to the everyday practice of the artists temporal studio situation in the extensive dimensions of the Viennese Ringstraßen areas building. Possibly or actually finding a new philosophical Sachlichkeit in the most metaphysical methods.

The production was also an attempt to re-appropriate earlier production procedures and repeat their exercises, by hopefully rectifying them. Like the performing space of the lamps, building a temple model, the postertext for the angel, mimicking and retouching childhood art historical objects, such as Doré's Jacob's encounter with the Angel, the internal and the sea monster, or the unexplainable attraction to useless poster folding. Drawings of the yellow light, burning soft metal, and coating it on found trash like bonbon chocolate box trays. The dark power of magnetism, gazing at the Porphyrian tree of life, collecting stones without knowing their names, confusing the canvases with a ballpoint pen, mimicking writing, obsessive paper folding, etc. But now, all these exercises, often kept unexhibited before, connect and suddenly make sense by observing Plotinus and his paradoxical drifts of thoughts. Like the phenomenon of feeling to be observed during moments of Hypostasis while connecting the separated materials.

Creating a limited time of exercise, often very basic and exclusively chemical. For instance, mostly in the burning and extinguishing of fire of metals like tin or lead, or the sulfuring connecting them to the canvases or the found objects from trash just through fire exclusively without glue, or by magnetizing the objects and connecting them only with particular stones. But always in dedication to the advice of Plotinus. The phenomenon, for instance, that while elaborating the most simple material experiments, in the very present moments, the vast thoughts might descend into them through inspiration, as if performing the universe's central force of Hypostasis, as Plotinus teaches to experience the descent of the inspirations into the sphere of simple material movements into the Hypostasis container.

Plotinus' pleasure surely lies in the attraction to the not-so-clear, the attraction of not really understanding, as he praises regarding another philosopher, "but he seems to teach by metaphor, not concerning himself about making a doctrine clear to us, probably with the idea that it is for us to seek within ourselves as he sought for himself and found."

It is better to choose something that cannot clearly be understood, and that "it is weariness to keep toiling at the same things and always beginning again," invoking the great spirit of not understanding, at least during the time while approaching or even entering some new field.

The attraction of the things and the thoughts that are not so easy to discover, as we find inconsistencies, but still those works appear to be more attractive than the very consistent ones, getting much more light from them. Maybe such pleasures and attraction derive from a deep sense of the pleasures of the liberation from the intellectual imprisonments, for instance, of the consistent and the clarified.

In permanent respect to the advice of Plotinian philosophy (Plotinos, c. 204 - 270 CE), although reappropriating them in very freewheeling modes of interpretation and pseudo-Plotinic text, that in order to emanate a thought into the material sphere, one might better use materials not only without such thought but by actually negating it. Bringing oneself into a situation of self-refusal to become an instrument of such thought and having faith that such thought will emanate by its own power.

Saying how to become hypostatic as a cultural producer who is willing to withdraw from all prefigured assumptions, not out of nihilistic desire (although including it at times) but to emanate thought in general, or in metaphysical ways even, and by the way revealing the reason why sometimes using stupid things can be higher and intellectually more demanding than any translating production attitudes.

Interestingly, the greatest or, as many say, the most influential philosopher, Plotinus himself, did not care to be understood.

Text by Josef Strau

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Institutional Exhibitions

Josef Strau
Tears and New Tears

Introduction

Like before all the exhibitions one day I get to the kitchen desk that recently in fact turned into a black marble kitchen island and assumed I could explain with hard felt simple words why I would do what I do, why I did such and such and even what went through me while working on it. Usually it means getting lost pretty fast. I must have been deluded by a mean spirit very early in my artist life, that production should be self-reflective, that it should include documentation of some production related self-observing recording and even should put a critical eye on the artists biographical events or on the existential usually pretty bad conditions, coming along with the unavoidable self-sacrifices, the sufferings so to say, the idiosyncrasies of erratic confusions, that lead to the only good works. Not even the knowledge of such procedure’s eternally repeated failure or the influence of well-meaning people can exorcise the miseries of such early implanted possessive acts.

So I certainly wished I could zoom away from myself as if looking from far away at that entity and would join others considering what they obviously make of it. That would not be too kind to myself in fact. Remembering the moments of origin of such artistic deviation catching the first times of intrusion, would mean to a healthy mind removing them. Wouldn’t such procedure of self embetterment mean learning that even good influence such as having seen great movies and books read while the brain still developed years before artistic possessions of my own mounted uncontrolled, would maybe in my case have been of no good influence at all. So what is it that some like me as they look back on their own duration only look back on negative transformations of good influence events that after devoured into our all consuming subjectivity only turned through unproductive fragmentation into obscure misunderstandings and even complete deterioration?

Thinking of JJ Rousseau’s second autobiography, or second confessions he wrote, a great confusing and violent book on himself. He wrote it with the intention to produce more evidence to who he believed were his prosecutors and accusers. He somehow ceased being autobiographical, stopped laying out his life like in his first confessions how he remembered it well meaning and rational but turned it into mapping it with all his knowledge to give a picture of his roots of evil and wrongdoings, turning in a somehow cinematographic shift his protagonist I into his own antagonist I. He felt the self-imposed prosecutors and judges of his 18th century Paris social environment would accuse him but never really tell what was the accusation, what his wrongdoings. So he sat down to help them and elaborated on an endless long and quite unreadable self-accusation. After being written he wanted to submit it like a prosecutor’s supporting evidence and deposited the first final copy right at the place he believed was the center the origin place of all accusations the center of cultural power of his time. He believed it must be the altar and center of Notre Dame cathedral. And he achieved the difficult act and squeezed himself through the metal fence barriers before the Sunday mass and put the collected self-accusation next to the mass book to be read the very first time by the highest cardinal himself to the congregating audience of highest and most powerful influencers. I cannot verify it but I believe nothing happened and it was just entirely ignored.

I myself today would not even know what the altar of cultural power would be, it would be a bit frivolous to say it here at the kitchen island beginning this hopefully finally sincerely executed writing act, but at least in our fragmented situation with my own interior even much more fragmented intentionality, I for sure will do it very differently from the to me greatest genius of great and adored 18th century France and probably end up not so completely ignored rather very frivolously received in the 8th floor gallery space, which I say not at all with humorous intention but with great gratitude and a feeling of unending unworthiness, feeling like a straying so foreign entity that found some compassionate context and grateful for a place to be fed and to sleep finally in the brightest peoples great and almost sacred city of refuge. Because you seem to always tolerate it when I am giving something away and deposit what can only appear most silly and almost ignorant in the intense struggles we are all facing in the contemporary condition, written in such tedious simple and always even mistaken language of ignorant un-contemporaneity. It is not the result as you will believe of a blasé-ish unproductive artist’s attitude but of his unfiltered disabilities.