Art World                                                                                                                                         an Essay by Joe Walentini

From the brochure:

Come to wonderful, enchanting and exotic ArtWorld! 

Spend many a languid hour on our beautiful beaches along the edge of the Sea of Hues.  Behold the spectacle of the Cubist Canyons. See if your heart can take the Action->Painting->Adventure ride.  See history reveal itself in the Theatre of Multiple Imagery. Wonder at the images of people long dead who countenances live on with force and vitality. Walk the Halls of Uncompromised Aesthetic Principals and have your integrity checked and challenged. Come visit the veritable capital of the �Imagine Nation�.

Your senses will be tickled pink (cerulean, viridian, magenta or mars yellow  yes we have all the colors)! See the famous 2-edged sword that alternately dispenses genius and madness.  Play Russian roulette with the Success/Failure gun. And no trip to ArtWorld is complete without a visit to the birthplace of the original Starving Artist. You get all this and more when you come to ArtWorld! So what are you waiting for? Come to ArtWorld today. Come Everyday!

Essay Continues...

Have you ever been to ArtWorld?  If you don�t know what it is or where it is or how to get there then no; you�ve never been. It�s like asking someone how much their new car cost: if you need to ask you probably can�t afford it. Well you can afford ArtWorld - everyone can. The lingering question is whether you will you pay the price.  It is a handily accessible destination and elegantly uncomplicated for those with the means though utterly impossible for those without.  But isn�t that is the nature of travel  if you�ve got it you get to go and if you don�t, well� same story with ArtWorld.  Once upon a time when the fabric of my life was woven from simpler material I used to live there sometimes for long periods. These days I�m reduced to brief visits stealing myself away when I can to its fertile landscapes  a middle-age miscreant - as life and events have pressed their all consuming demands on me.  �But what is ArtWorld?� you, the uninitiated, ask.

The first thing to know is that the travel brochure, like all advertising, takes a quite few liberties. Strangely though, this plays well for ArtWorld where subjectivity and perception thrive like exotic plant life in warm climates.

How do you describe a place as vast, beautiful, stimulating and even sometimes frightening as ArtWorld?  To portray it is either a physical entity or a state of mind is simultaneously right and wrong.  After a few trips you will quickly understand that contradictions abound tying in as they do with the aforementioned twin pillars of subjectivity and  

perception.  ArtWorld is what I�ve come to understand as a slippery locale  dynamic, ephemeral and experiential. At the same time it is possessed of solidly physical qualities and dimensions which never remain static. The shifting coordinates are such that a particular way you are used to getting there can be lost one day.  But no worries  you can just as easily find another. The population too is indeterminate  a shifting milieu that numbers in the millions to a single individual (you).

Time does not function in ArtWorld the same way it does in the Real World. Time is more elastic, far less structured and its measurement is of negligible importance. With my comings and goings to ArtWorld I�ve noticed how perceived time varies. Occasionally time speeds up but mostly it slows down with the advantage that the time spent in this wonderful place is extended.  How would financial consultants put it? The ROI (return on investment) is very good. Much greater actually, when compared to a lot of other places.  Personally I have never gone to ArtWorld without returning a richer, more enlightened, homo sapiens for the experience.

---------------------------------

Now I just realized that I might cause a misunderstanding by distinguishing ArtWorld from what I�ve called the �Real World�.  This suggests that ArtWorld is just a fantasy and stands outside the bounds of actual experience while in fact the opposite is true.  The notion that day to day existence is somehow more real is questionable when you consider the many illusions it thrusts upon us as truth.  (Start with a topic like �politics� and how deeply do we need to scratch to reveal delusions constructed on lies?)  Day-to-day-to-day reality can be a dramatically volatile enterprise ranging from ecstatic to tragic a lot of which is beyond personal control. But let�s face it, everyday life for most of us is wrapped up in the tedious bundle of repetition and routine. More Real? Really? Perhaps - but certainly not in any absolute sense.

Contrast this with ArtWorld with its honest re-accounting and fundamental understanding that perception drives everything we experience. Here the concept of a real-world absolute truth does not function.  A different truth exists in ArtWorld, one that is relative and subservient to perception as the pre-requisite to all experience.  Your truth is true for you based on your sensory and cognitive perception just as mine is for me. Collective truth is garnered by an agreement of those perceptions by which reality is fabricated.  But you and I may also disagree on our perceptions of something and who is right? In ArtWorld we are both correct for ourselves.  Real World demands more certainty (the more the better) and struggles with relativity. But ArtWorld is just the inverse by fully acknowledging, supporting and promoting it.

AbArtOnline Home

Current Exhibition

Galerie Information

Archives