Suppressed expression as Becoming
The question is not how to remain open for something to become present, but how to keep pushing what is unconscious through the work—layer by layer—without closing down what emerges by deciding too soon what it means or what it should become.
Or, even more deeply:
The unconscious does not arrive whole. It is pushed through the work layer by layer, each gesture encountering resistance from the material and from what has already been made. The artist responds to what emerges, not by explaining it, but by allowing the next gesture to transform it.
It is emergence through relationship.
So my recent question to Adorno is what does this mean? —“what is reflected is blocked”—is so interesting.
The artist doesn’t simply have an inner image and transfer it outward.
There is something not yet available to consciousness.
The hand begins.
The material interrupts.
The unconscious presses.
The conscious intention restrains.
The material answers.
And something becomes present.
Then there is another layer, another reconfiguration, more color, more bindings.
But what is left, not pushed through in another layer, is suppressed expression.
