Art & Signs

09.09.2012 – Art & Signs

For many years now, I have been studying the intra-corporate world of a transnational oil and gas corporation, its intra-organizational features, its place in the external world system of interdependence of the goods it creates, raw materials and consumer demand for them, as well as their impact on the psychology of consumption that is changing in the world due to both direct and indirect involvement in this business of a huge number of people earning money on it, and most importantly – a catastrophic impact on the global ecology as a result, one involuntarily comes to understanding of the potential, semiotic depth, power of a conventional sign, which in the light of the topic under study is a logo designed to personify, at least, beneficence of the activities of such institutions in the socio-economic arrangement of the world, in which a positive image is a priority condition for a painless existence in it.

Under the convention of such a sign, one should, of course, understand an outwardly implicit, ambiguously represented entity. That is, writing out, for example, the silhouette of a person, we definitely understand by this image exactly a person who existed and exists in these parameters all the history known to us about him. In other words, the depicted person is a person and nothing else. With the same certainty, without inclining to the possibilities of a distorted consciousness, one could say about other obvious objects of reality – about the sea, a horse, a tree, books, etc. But when dealing with complex social phenomena, institutions of modernity, or at least physically tangible objects in their heterogeneity, but not subjecting to any precise ideas about the immutability of their physical outlines, it’s turned on in the human mind a certain associativity, figurativeness of their perception, fidelity of interpretation which are made dependent on certain knowledge in a particular area, or awareness of previous decisions regarding such objects, for example, the designation of iron ore with a black triangle on a geographic map of minerals, or a black and yellow symbol of radiation hazard. Situations of lack of information, unawareness about them are characterized, at times, by purely intuitive guessing by external attributes of the meanings behind such a sign (with varying degrees of proximity to their real qualities embedded in them). I would classify such signs as conditional, including logos. In each of them – in their elements, shapes and colors of these elements – in the original there is a certain meaning given to them, a message expected to be perceived. It seems that depending on the change in such forms and colors, the original meaning coming from the sign, its metaphysical essence gradually formed by these elements, also change, and the potential for such translatability can be extremely high, because the range of the language that the sign can speak in due to its conventionality is unpredictably wide. The effect, at the same time, of semantic metamorphoses is due to the degree of development of gradual changes in the original image, in which the sign managed to get used to, organically and steadily absorb the content originally embedded in it, having created a stable stereotype, a recognizable symbol, a certain brand through the visual representation of the stable forms and colors embedded in it.

Changing colors within recognizable forms can expose and turn the foundations of the usual worldview, thus opening access to understanding something hidden behind stable, familiar images. Fortunately, such metamorphoses are possible mainly only in the format of artistic experience, which is not always welcomed by the keepers of opaque systems. But art is what allows us to look beyond the established conventions in order to find out the truth hidden in them.

02.07.2014 – Post-Brand Existence of the Signs

A brand sign (or a logo, as it is also called) is a unique artistic object that visually describes an image that does not exist in the real world; a kind of simulacrum. It is an absolutely artistic symbol, originated in the territory of visual art, endowed with stability and invariability of proportions of shapes and colors. Regardless of the semantic ambitions put into it by the creator (or customer), the brand is doomed by itself to eventually become a complete artistic unit – not attached to any physical functionality, a visually materialized thought about the nonexistent in the objective world forms and colors that justified by the naturalness of their existence. The brand is absolutely fictional in the natural world of realistic objects; artistic materialization of things that do not exist in the world.

All that creates the completeness of this simulacrum is only color and shape.

The question: in case of disappearance (not important, for what reason) or withdrawal from the brand, represented by it, will the brand remain so? In such a case, will this visual image continue its post-brand existence in the already established, in its own way self-sufficient, quality? Or is it possible only if it is tied to the creator-intention? Is it due only to the doubtful conditional presence of the meaning embedded in it? Do such artistic elements (fundamental artistic components) as color and form have freedom from the content artificially filled in them? Can an artificially created shell exist freely when content is rejected from it? To what extent are the basic artistic elements – color and form – free from the conventions that they are endowed with in a certain construction and combination with each other; – are they free from the extremely conditional introducing into them of something that is not there?

05.09.2014 – Post-Brand Existence of the Signs

In the event of the disappearance of the root causes, the source of the emergence of the brand, does the brand itself remain to continue with the same acquired degree of its significance and fame, but at the same time – as an independent object? In what form will it continue to exist as an object independent of its entire previous history of existence and its practical past functioning? And can a branded sign even exist in its post-brand existence? If so, what will it carry in itself, by itself, being in such a status? What will be its semiotic message, or are these just some associations with the history of the former referentiality? What is the place (perhaps absolutely new in the gallery of historical or archival memory of humanity) of the object of post-brand existence if this sign no longer carries a practical expression of its former meaning? And what is the nature of such place, its significancy, if the post-brand existence of the sign still has a place to be?

Along with this, such a situation also implies another existential side of the process – that abandoned past that was once a brand; and another form, bearing in its present traces of the presence in it of the content that has left it.

17.10.2014 – Art & Signs

A style consciously devoid of pictorial abundance can detect and reveal, at times, the depth of meanings that, under other circumstances, would remain under the impenetrable familiarity of a stable order of things. Scilicet, this is about the discovery of hidden, shadow meanings behind both the most complex phenomena that do not imply an unambiguous understanding, and the simplest ones – so often that, due to their well-established familiarity, they do not even raise questions about their origin as such; – while in such situations, phenomena or objects, meanings can be hidden that reveal the true starting links in the cause-and-effect relationships of an extremely complex world order.

01.12.2014 – Art & Signs

The direction of visual art, where a “pure” sign acts as a central element to convey meaning, could well be called semioart, – a direction where the sign, dominating, not only comes to the fore, but compositionally forms a new code of previously hidden meanings, – or so imperceptible according to the present form of their existence, that was barely guessed under the conditional, superficial knowledge about them.

08.12.2014 – Signometaphors

The signs that have entered our life – both simulacra and naturally functioning ones – have become so firmly established in our consciousness that those depicted in different or modified forms still demonstrate the stability of their original configurative-color formula, that is, the primary form-color construction, from which subsequent experimental meanings transformations come – signometaphors.

This entirely relate to the obvious artistic phenomenon – the role of form and color in the formation of the signaling of semiotic signs, their recognition.

30.05.2015 – Art & Signs

The brand mark itself is already an artistic unit, outwardly complete and self-sufficient, and most often contains the potential for the development and generation of new meanings. In this given, the most interesting is hidden, which is inherent in its nature as a source of comparison of lines, colors and shapes. Therefore, it would probably be the height of absurdity to perceive a sign as something reserved and taboo by the conventions of formal rules in order to protect the interests of market players. Color and lines, forms of their artistic expression existed long before the formation of the system of current economic relations that formed the basis of the suicidal nature of current civilization. But they largely dictate, alas, the conditions for the distribution of material wealth. Such rules are not absolute and are often questionable from ethical point of view; and, of course, they are far from perfect in the light of the harmonious formation of both interpersonal relations, relations between man and society, and the establishment of culture as the basis of a conflict-free world.

19.07.2015 – Underground & Therapeutic Role of Art

It is obvious that the creation of further works, the generation of new ideas are, unfortunately, conditioned by the continuation of work in bp – being in this environment, to see what’s being studied from the inside, and, in continuity with the process, transform what is reflected into artistic material. It seems that this is the only way to achieve the most genuine result, – not embellished according to the memories left in the memory. But in the meantime, how burdensome it is to endure the essence of the visible while being in its environment, to be a part of this sometimes frank delirium, feeling the daily impact of gray and alien everyday life.

In order to endure, not to go crazy, two things help – the awareness of the temporality of what is happening and the unexpectedly revealed therapeutic component of the works I create myself. To create them, you need to be there. To survive there, you need to create them. Thus, the therapeutic role of Art was suddenly revealed. Rather, it has always been, but its evidence is revealed only in a certain state of factors that have come down together with each other at the edge of intolerable conditions. According to the recollections of former political prisoners, poetry saved some of them in the GULAG. Times are different, circumstances are different. But dystopia always has one thing in common. It’s impossible to survive in such environments without ideological position and solid motives.

05.08.2015 – ‘Breaking Containment’ as the new genre of Artist’s book

Ontology of Globalism, oms-smgo and values turned out to be some kind of breaking containment, revealing the tightness of the book form, which they had been originally set and conceived in the form of their combined integrity, in which they were designed to serve the set goals of forming the attitude required by the Corporation towards its priorities through the prism of the established by it appropriate worldview. When building the original, all visual details were scrupulously taken into account – from textual content to color and location of page elements. This is how their original form was created – absolutely complete in its tightness.

The unsealing of the form and content reveals the profane imperfection of semantic intentions that were initially laid in the original, which presuppose the truth of the meanings, skillfully concealed under the hermetically compiled form.

Thus, artistic revision acts as a decoder of distorted realities.

10.09.2015 – Art & Signs

No matter how clear and recognizable the sign may be, often a question vaguely emerges through it – guessingly present, barely looming. The only tone in which the work ‘The Sign’ could have been done is gray on gray. No frills and no embellishments.

14.09.2015 – Art & Signs

There is no doubt that the flag itself is a very rich, strong sign that contains a powerful potential for further development, coming both from within (being determined by purely artistic aspects, the characteristics of its own visuality), and demanded by external factors, by its semiotic component. Being so meaningfully valuable in relation to actual and hidden meanings, the flag as a sign creates a wide field for semantic discoveries and their subsequent interpretations.

But, in addition to interpretive and visual-expansive possibilities, its uniqueness among other iconic signs is sometimes also determined by a special aura, – hardly perceptible, but allowing one to feel other semantic vectors emanating from its compositional-spatial integrity, previously not recognized in it. In this magic of semiosis lies the key to understanding many, at first glance, irrational processes, which, most likely, constitute the highest plan for its generation. In this segment of the transfer of knowledge from the sign to the interpreter reading it, which is not subject to any of the known measurements, the most unexpected possibilities of revealing in it – in the sign – previously unknown beginnings are laid.

19.09.2015 – The Theory of Reverse Influence of the Sign

Most likely, the connection of the sign with the referent (body) that artificially brought it to life – in addition to the semantic one – also exists at a much more subtle level – as a supposed dialogue, and – as an energy channel of reverse impact. And it is surprising at the same time that if the body is perishable in its obvious temporality, then the sign brought to life by it can theoretically be eternal, being doomed (due to the artistry of its nature) to an endless existence within the framework of the civilizational time that gave rise to it – post-brand existence, for example, after the disappearance of the body into oblivion. But, during the life of this body, the connection, at times, is quite mystical.

The content of the energy channel of the reverse impact of the Sign on the Body, its effect, is determined by the content of its individual elements, colors and overall shape, which form visually stable signs of the Sign. The brand sign brought to life, invisibly and gradually begins to influence its creator. Colors, shapes, their correlation and general architectonics, which form an integral image and the energy emanating from it, determine the nature of this influence, and the nature of the feedback at first glance seems very irrational and mystical, which is a purely superficial perception of its manifestations. Gradually developing, it builds up into a kind of dependence of the Body on its own creation, which not only invisibly influences it, but also at certain moments in history – perhaps the most fateful ones – can demonstrate an unexpected independence of the return communication with it. In such unpredictability, it seems, a certain fatality of their relationship manifests itself, a kind of destiny involuntarily embedded in the Sign, which works both with the outside world and with its creator, up to determining, perhaps, its fate. In such a phenomenon, the effect of underestimation of the forces that give rise to works of Art, nourishing the energy of their creation, is also unexpectedly revealed. Endowed with a certain magic of the animate, they bring it, at times, to the works of Art – the dominant of the spiritual / aesthetic / intellectual through the created physical.

28.01.2016 – Art & Signs

The reason for the mysticism that sometimes seems to us and is actually sometimes contained in the sign is, rather, that the sign initially carries a meaning that is unknown completely to us. And even if it is revealed in the end, it does not appear all at once. The paradox is that, being conventionally outlined, taken out, sometimes, from the depths of the subconscious, it was a priori not created by us, but already existed before us. We gave him only his final visual image. Not only is the life of signs pre-event with this moment unknown to us, their essence from the moment of co-existence with our ideas about them is also unknown to the end. The mystery of the world of signs is permeable only where there is still a visible trace of their origin that goes into the past. Unless it is created as an absolutely new product of the generation of modern times.

The statement about the abstract nature of other signs would also be a big mistake – erroneous due to the initial lack of knowledge about the true essence of the sign and what it means, which does not at all imply the appropriateness of referring to abstract painting for a more complete transfer of meaning. But, as a complementary tool. Abstract painting and the apparent abstractness of a sign are far from being identical.

01.02.2016 – Post-Brand Existence of the Signs

What is a brand mark? An iconic sign is created, in which the implied meaning is embedded, and a stable association of this meaning with the symbol created for it, is worked out.

But, what if over time the meaning disappears – its value, semantic expectations, the content itself? A question from the category attributed to the post-brand existence of the sign – one of the most mystical, most hidden aspects of its existentiality.

17.02.2016 – The Peripherality of Meanings-Controlling Signs

The significance of the gray-colored pro-semantic zone is determined by the “peripheral” placement of the meanings-controlling signs in it. As if illuminated by the flickering of the background backstage, they precede the intermediate inviolability of the situationally expressed state of the represented microcosm. Retaining the effect of seeming “secondary”, these signs control the “main” meaning, which is formed, as a rule, in the center, described in chromatic colors. Thus, an object placed in the pre-conceptual “dynamism” of gray acts as a visual concentration of a new meaning, reinforced or developed by the signs of the background forerunner that control it.

In this intuitively discovered innovation, the possibilities attributed to the sphere of purely formal facets of visual art are manifested – in the shades of gray color of peripheral meanings-controlling signs, the dynamics of the development of meaning is revealed, although formally residing in the static nature of what is depicted, but containing the infinity of what is possible in the research of the hidden.

22.02.2016 – Art & Meanings-Controlling

The symbols placed in the four corners of the canvas symbolize the relevance to the four dimensions (and not the cardinal points), meaning the state of the totality of the meanings-controlling signs and the depth of the outgoing source of meaning. Geometrically, the angle is always deeper and farther than the side, representing a more complex construct, including the possible accessibility of the still sought fourth, metaphysical dimension.

28.03.2016 – Art & Signs

If color is pure energy, then after the sign breaks with the referent, closed exclusively on itself, it accumulates this energy only in itself, imbued with the former reference to history that has gone into the past. But, as a given, nevertheless, the sign continues to exist – abstracted from the referent, it is. After breaking with it, its existence does not stop. It continues to be.

Is the energy of color able to find a new meaning in it? And – vice versa.

10.08.2016 – Post-Brand Existence of the Signs

There is a strong feeling that over time, the brand sign acquires the signs of a metaphysical image – a canonized object of visual correlation. Perhaps this is directly related to the metaphysics of his own energy gradually concentrated in him, generated independently of someone’s original intentions. 

At the same time, it has long been known that some commercial corporations intend to use the sigil as logos – a kind of magical tool to achieve their goals through concentrated impact. In those cases, when the logo of the company is not such, then the representing it iconic brand sign is in itself able to acquire over time its own, formulating by its visuality a specific code of evoked sensations, signaling ideas about the represented image. The accumulation of energy is only a matter of time, and, accordingly, the degree of the effect, the consequences of which cannot be fully calculated at first. It is even more difficult to answer the question about the post-brand condition of a sign, when formally the referent breaks with it, but it has already found its place in this world and the energy accumulated in it continues to exude.

05.09.2016 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Politics is a Concentrated Expression of Economy

Compositioning of sign symbols in a comparably-transformable way reveals the sign with all its immanent evidence. By transferring it into the format of the revealed meanings, it is released from the former staticity, which is critical for the preservation of the immutability of established ideas. The disclosure of the sign leads to the identification of those entities that, for a variety of reasons, may or were previously preferred “not to appear – not to be indicated,” what in the light of the disclosure of the sign does not at all mean the process of anticipating the signified by the sign. The semantic potential of most signs is so significant that in the disclosed state it often reveals a two-layer, and sometimes even a multi-layer, meanings formed by it, that are formed for perception on the basis of a priori existing prerequisites, but not out of nothingness.

For example, the British flag is one sign with a definite meaning and a generally obvious semiosis. The bp logo is also. And even placed against the background of the British flag, both of them do not represent any particularly new meaning, but only reinforce the relevance to a certain genesis; their semantic content and other references remain the same. With such a background combination of them, it just arises the sign concentration of individual facets of remaining essentially unchanged the partly common meaning for the both, what perhaps represents one of the intermediate states of the sign in its development towards disclosure.

But, if you change their colors with each other – the flag with the logo – while maintaining all the other parameters of the second against the background of the first, then a different, completely new and common meaning for both signs arises, herewith – revealing them, forming much more distant horizons while maintaining previous references. This is how the work Politics is a Concentrated Expression of Economy appeared, in which an attempt is also made to answer the questions concerning the basics of visual perception of an image: what is primary in the recognition of an image – color or form? And does one always prevail over the other? If color is pure energy, and the shape and lines are the direction of this energy, then with the interchange of the color components of two signs that have to each other, not only a new – perhaps sometimes much more significant – meaning arises, but also the energy of their completely new perception, which generates a completely different understanding of what comes from them – the essence, hidden in the depths of their complex nature. Not to mention how impenetrable is the depth of the interpenetration of politics with the economy, the invisibility of the many interconnections of their complex and carefully hidden, at times, merger and interaction.   

Another work, which turned out to be a convenient abode of the sign that unfolds in it, is ‘Oilfield’ (in Russian version it sounds as ‘place of birth’), where a number of brand signs undergo metamorphosis, giving them the energy of dynamism of intentions, the threshold of action, while maintaining obvious recognition and referentialism to a static original.

If in the first case the colors change when the shape is saved, then in the second case the shape changes when the colors are saved.

Thus, we can talk about both the static character of an iconic sign, when it demonstrates the immutability of the form originally embedded in it and corresponds to the generally accepted meaning initially behind such a form, and about the revealed sign, which allows to look beyond the initially permissible, into the sphere of the previously hidden, when the revealed sign presents completely new meanings lurking at greater depths than when the sign is in a state of its primary staticity. Revealing the multi-layered meanings by means of artistic visualization of the disclosed sign makes it possible to ascertain its fundamental ability to be dynamic; – to talk about its “living” nature, thus bringing the sign into full conformity with the essence of the process of semiosis itself, – as two energetically equal elements of semiotics. The criteria for the plasticity of a sign in the process of manifestation of its dynamism can be both in itself and outside the limits of its very form – in external compositional possibilities.

If a sign in its transformation evolves to new meanings, then having reached the final goal, having designated them, it opens up and, revealing the potential inherent in itself, clearly demonstrates, contrary to the accepted ideas about its staticity, its dynamism, that is – the relevance to the nature of living things.

11.10.2016 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Sign of a Sign

The word as a sign, highlighting the signified from the gray field of obscurity, means, in fact, the “sign” itself. Sign of a sign. The circle, in a sense, closes. And the sign meets its infinity.

31.10.2016 – Art & Signs

To the artwork oms-smgo

If we proceed from the fact that transcendental objectification is built from intersemiotic relations, and an artistic object is able to set in motion several signs or sign systems that are correlated with each other, then in the work ‘oms – smgo’ one of them acts as a prototext – the text of corporate regulations, the second one – artistically interpreting them (partially geometric at times) abstraction.

01.11.2016 –Art & Signs

To the artwork oms-smgo

If Bataille’s transgression is overcoming certain social prohibitions, cultural traditions or moral regulations in the experience of “absolute negativity” (death, ecstasy, madness), then in the artistic field of oms-smgo work, transgression is realized through overcoming corporate regulations in the underground experience of artistic comprehension, as a result, the concept of transgression turns out to be partially removed from the category of moral negativity into the category of intellectual resistance, and above all – the erosion of the personality in a system that unifies space.

29.11.2016 – Art & Peripheral Meanings-Controlling Signs

Gray color is the absolute background of a target-expression, on which the peripheral meanings-controlling sign determines the dynamics and, at times, the entire metaphysics of the central object.

08.12.2016 – Art & Sign

To the artwork Invisible Totality of Signs

In pre-conceptual terms, the word ‘sign’ appears invisibly and crowned as a unifying dominant for all existing and still possible words. Meaning the determinable of everything and everyone, it is sacred in the essence of its intra-linguistic purpose – the word as the essence of what is uttered and determined. Being such, but remaining in the shadows and for the most part not voiced, comprehension begins with it, and it stands behind comprehension. Hidden as a word, but ubiquitous as an essence, the sign is everywhere. The sign is the linguistic Grail of the worldview.

14.02.2017 – Art & Signs

To the artwork In the Beginning Was the Word

If a sign is a semantic designation of objects of the universe, then in a sense, it is also an external shadow cast by the contours of the world outlook. The very word “sign” appears to be the lingual forerunner of this process. In the beginning was the word …

20.02.2017 – Art & Signs

To the artwork In the Beginning Was the Word

The linguistic expression of the sign itself is, in fact, the word that was in the beginning.

21.02.2017 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Invisible Totality of Signs

The sign is total. The sign is ubiquitous. The sign is merged with reality, creating and representing it. In fact, it is endless. It is a sign of totality and infinity.

23.02.2017 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Sign of a Sign

The sign of a sign means both the symbol itself of the semantic expression of the word “sign” and the very understanding of the sign in its semiotic expression, that is, as a categorical concept of semiotics. If the “the sign of a sign” is its clear identification, then the sign itself is both the known and the signified. Accordingly, the “the sign of a sign” in a certain sense is an iconic designation of the beginning of the beginnings of intellectual cognition.

17.05.2017 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Post-Brand Existence of the Sign. Post-Simulacrum

If a brand sign is initially a kind of convention, endowed in the course of its development, and later – as it actively couples with the signified – with certain associative qualities, then over time it acquires a full-fledged iconic designation of a referent, that is, a state of associative inalienability from it.

But unlike many other semiotic signs around us, the specificity of brand iconic signs lies in their initial artificiality. If, for example, the word ‘running’ is a sign that means a process or a fact of running, and it has always been, is and will always be (as long as a person will exist in his current capacity), then a brand mark at the preliminary initial stage of its existence is rather, a simulacrum that has to remain as such for a short, initial, but definite period of time, until its final connection with the referent takes place, merging with a representative image – that is, until a socially recognized semantic ovary of artificially created iconic sign with the signified occurs. Only some time later, after certain formal processes and the implementation of the required scale of the attachment – in the consciousness of society – to the newly created sign of the meaning given to it, it, which initially remained for a short period of time as a simulacrum, acquires the status of an iconic sign assigned to the signified.

This, in turn, affects the concept of universality, the naturalness of the sign as such. If, for example, the process of running was, is and will always be, and the word ‘running’ itself has been and will always be from time immemorial, and the balance of this sign with the concept it signifies will be as obvious as the immensity of the future of the present civilization seems to be, then the situation with the brand mark as an iconic symbol of the signified is very unstable and not so definite in the foreseeable future.

Initially appearing as an order, although the newly-made sign acquires the final characteristics of an iconic sign with a specific and clear connection to the referent, but it can exist as such as long as the signified itself, the existence duration of which, in turn, seems to be relatively short-lived. It is absolutely certain that not a single commercial, non-profit or any other structure exists as much as objects, concepts that naturally reside in time and, accordingly, their designations. Thus, the question involuntarily arises about the nature of the post-brand existence of a sign – about its essence at a disappearing referent: what happens to artificial sign after the disappearance of the signified? Can a sign mean anything at all without a referent? Does it provoke memories of him, fulfilling the mission of some kind of historical reference, a visual artifact, or is it just a product of an obsolete reality, meaning the remaining something? This is how post-simulacra come to our world. Not comprehended yet.

12.08.2017 – Art & Signs

Through the symbols – whether conventional or metaphorical – it is possible to convey much deeper meanings than through the writing of realistic images that form their just direct meaning.

02.03.2018 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Intra-Sign Infinity

Limited externally, a sign can have an unlimited depth of internal content. Its metaphysical essence is contained in the intra-sign infinity. Perhaps this is the very sought-for, but still not found fourth dimension, which stores, among other things, the energy of as yet unknown depths, hidden in the sign.

It’s doubtful that we are able to discover this dimension with our sensory experience. But, in the case of a hypothetical penetration into it, the development of an intra-sign space, it could open up completely new, hitherto unseen opportunities for us, – including in relation to access to the energies of forms hidden from us.

17.01.2019 – Multifaceted Role of Color

Color is capable of expressing much more than its aesthetic and emotional components. With certain factors added together, it is able to create and carry such a semantic load, which makes its given invaluable precisely in the intellectual knowledge of the world. And this changes the idea of the phenomenon of color in art, as a bearer of an exclusively emotional component.

18.01.2019 – Art & Signs

The artistic language of iconic signs, in fact, lays out the formula of encoded meanings, exposing and revealing them.

21.01.2019 – Art & Iconography of Brand Signs

The iconography of brand signs is, in fact, a new language, the alphabet of which consists of shapes and colors that are correlated with already well-established symbols, the variations and compositional expressiveness of which form the semantic content of the final narrative; a language in which color in the system of its correlation with the line of forms symbolizes the meaning that is initial for subsequent development. 

The entire iconography of brand signs – in the context of this language – is implemented as part of a broader art-lingual system of relevant abstract symbols, that is, related to explicit referents. But their visual conventionality is much more correlated with abstractness (not with abstractionism) than with a system of traditional signs and images.

12.02.2019 – Underground & The Brand Sign

Although the resistance seems to be almost the leitmotif of the entire Project, in fact it is only a natural and inevitable background against which a much more significant semantic essence, the sign, is scrupulously studied. It is clear that the resistance is a consequence of a difficult desire for freedom, the overhead of its eternal search. But, the central theme against the backdrop of the protest was and remains no less profound in its attractiveness a phenomenon of a different order – the sign – a high philosophical symbol, capacious and meaningful, absorbing everything, and simultaneously dominating at a distance over the interaction of the studied meanings and processes. In the observed dichotomy of the system and signs (including the system itself, those representing), the first appears as a respectably decorated dystopia, a vain space of interdependencies bordering, at times, on absurdity, turning into a frankly circus tent in places; the second is an artistic symbol, an aesthetic icon bearing the semiotic burden of the signified.

22.02.2019 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Intra-Sign Infinity

An iconic sign can hide sometimes in itself much more meanings, energy of influence and potential for development than we see only on the surface and within the boundaries of the forms by which they are outlined. If to discover and develop the shapes logic vector in relation to colors (which are assigned the role not only of an emotional nature, but also of logical content), then there are chances to reveal incredible depths of meanings they carry. So I came to understanding the ‘living nature’ of signs – if they contain energy (condition for any impact always implies the presence of energy), then they already contain a living principle that we have not yet fully understood; and if a sign carries the potential of internal development for the further formation of new meanings, then it can no longer be something once and for all completed and dead.

01.03.2019 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Intra-Sign Infinity

Any semiotic text, like any sign, is unlimited in interpretation. It can be limited only in each specific case due to various subjective factors associated with the interpreter. But theoretically, any sign, like a text, is unlimited. Hence – the infinity of culture. Hence – and the infinity of the search for meanings. And if a sign initially cannot exist without a referent, then penetrating into the secrets of intra-sign infinity we have a chance to reach the primary source of meanings through the metaphysics of reverse channel from the sign to the referent, what in turn can open up completely different horizons for us in understanding the original meanings, proto-meanings, perhaps long lost.

09.09.2019 – Corporation & Simulacra

The poster-procedural fabric has become so accustomed to the flesh of bp against the background of the isolation of the depicted from reality that in their striving for the ultimate formulated imperativeness, they break with their referents and interact more with each other than contribute to the management of the reality burdened by them. BP is the embodied alienation of signs from reality.

18.01.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artworks Trendkeeper

A brand sign is just an abstract symbol, often a simulacrum. One of the motives of the artistic process over the comprehension of such symbols is the creation of that compositional environment in which the abstract sign acquires a clear meaning, and the simulacrum acquires its attachment to the reality that justifies its existence.

04.03.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artworks Transgression of the Sign

The transgression is possible only through the awareness and recognition of the entire vertical of cause-and-effect relationships that determine the possibility of a potential breakthrough.

25.09.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Intra-Sign Infinity

There can be much more semantic layers and meanings in a sign (especially in simulacra) than the formal designation originally embedded in it. With a deeper immersion in the sign, it is sometimes found that its inner space is much deeper and wider than outlined by its formal limits. So a word sometimes has a much deeper meaning than its semantic meaning.

08.10.2020 – Art & Signs

An iconic brand mark is not only a simulacrum, a copy that does not have an original, but often has nothing in common with the declared one; – sometimes, even the complete opposite of what is formally declared. A brand sign is a brilliant example of the alienation of a sign from reality.

09.10.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Sign Identity Provocation. Reverse Alienation of Reality

Taking into account the congestion of the artificial component of the sign world, provoking the alienation of reality itself, Baudrillard’s assertion about the established dictatorship of signs acquires another no less valuable dimension that reveals the mechanism of a totally established perception of reality – the phenomenon of the illusory perception of its content is revealed. The original is largely, if not lost, then far from always available. If it ever existed at all.

10.10.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Sign Identity Provocation. Reverse Alienation of Reality

Having overloaded the world with themselves, brand signs imperceptibly created their own parallel reality, which formed a rather distorted idea of the real world. The conditional reality created in this way, which the brand sign, having previously changed, absorbed and declares to the world, does not correspond to reality, what creates a unique opportunity for Artist investigating it to reverse extrapolate the reality alienated by the signs, thus exposing the provocation of the sign identity.

12.10.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artwork Post-Brand Existence of the Sign. Post-Simulacrum

What happens to the sign when the signified disappears? And what happens to the sign when the connection with the signified disappears? There is a thin but very significant line between these two states.

The iconic brand sign, as an unconditionally completed artistic miniature, which ceases to represent the entity that caused it to exist, due to the cessation of the existence of the entity itself, passes from the state of a simulacrum to a post-simulacrum. The iconic brand sign, which ceases to represent a certain entity due to the replacement of this sign by another (rebranding), nevertheless leaves behind the post-simulacrum a state of meta-energy in relation to the previously (formally) signified, accumulated during the time of connection with the signified.

If a branded sign is a simulacrum, a copy of a non-existent original, then what does the simulacrum turn into when “non-existent one” ceases to exist? Accordingly, it should be recognized that a brand sign is not just a simulacrum, but an illusion, deliberately conceived to create an illusory world that has nothing in common with the signified it represents. Accordingly, as a unit of the image, meaningfully not tied to the formally signified, the illusion, which in the past was called a brand mark, is able to continue its independent stay in the visual world after the disappearance of the signified. So, the simulacrum goes into the category of post-simulacrum, a free iconic sign that is able to carry informational memory about the past, about the fragility of the world of past illusions, its fragile ties. The post-simulacrum is the bearer of the memory of past illusions and the fragility of their connections with the conventionally signified.

14.10.2020 – Art & Signs

All brand signs are doomed to eventually find their post-brand existence. Unlike the others, their referent is more than fleeting.

20.11.2020 – Art & Meta-Abstract Symbols

Meta-abstract symbols are signs bordering with a state of transition to other, more specific symbols; relevant in their borderline to obvious concepts and meanings. Hence their natural second definition – relevant abstract symbols.

21.12.2020 – Art & Signs

To the artwork The Color Equivalent of the Brand Value, Determined by the Dialectic of Unity and Struggle of Opposites and Post-Trend Void

With a very relative abstractness of the symbols used (relevant-abstract, or as I also call them – meta-abstract), the semantic load generated by them is more than obvious and evident by itself. With a certain compositional structure, they create an absolute given of the semantic field, sometimes allowing for a second semantic layer hidden underneath, minimized as much as possible from everything superfluous and superficial.

Compositional combination and juxtaposition of relevant abstract symbols can convey the essence of much more complex phenomena than those that can only be described through traditionally used visual languages; – for example, the visual expression of the essence of completely abstract concepts, in particular, the economic concept of value that does not exist in the visual designation (contextually in the work The Color Equivalent of the Brand Value, Determined by the Dialectic of Unity and Struggle of Opposites), or the absence of a trend in the post-market state (as in Post-Trend Void). Thus, we find ourselves in an unusually paradoxical situation, when the artistic language of generally non-abstract (meta-abstract) symbols describes visually abstract concepts, while the well-known historical heritage of artistic experience has so far used only abstraction as the only possible language for describing any abstract phenomena and concepts.

Slowly and reluctantly, the secrets of the terra incognita of fine art are being revealed.

07.01.2021 – Art & Meta-Abstract Minimalism

In the transfer of maximum semantic completeness by minimal visual means, there is an internal focus on revealing the quintessence of meaning, finding its very essence. In the complex search for irreplaceable truth, everything superfluous is cut off. The composition is reduced to the limit; spared from senseless excesses, superficial skill and unjustified burden of forms for the sake of the effect of external attractiveness.

Such minimalism of expressive means can be achieved through the meta-abstractness of the symbols used, shortening the path to finding the desired images by excluding meaningless stages from it, burdened with a heap of unnecessary forms and slyly distracting conventions. The permanently observed result of this process produces a stable pattern, defined as meta-abstract minimalism. It could be assumed that minimalism is the essence of the expressive language that creates images so complete in terms of meaning. But it is rather a form of their transmission, a background method of semiosis. It was not thanks to minimalism that they were possible, but only in its very appropriate format for their expression.

05.04.2021 – Art & Signs

From the point of view of materiality, a brand as such is a dubious and hardly tangible phenomenon in itself. What’s behind it is often extremely difficult to understand clearly, no matter what intentions and meanings are invested in its visualization by the customer. Considering that it is also a sign, sometimes iconic, meaning the presence of the things and concepts it implies very scattered in reality, then another and rather more adequate form of visual expression of the brand would be an abstraction, rather than a clearly defined iconic sign. Abstraction, therefore, may be the only language that is able to convey the adequacy of the presence of the brand in reality, logically completing the visual essence of the signified convention. Thus, an adequately visualized brand may turn out to be the point of intersection of the semantic vectors of reality, in which abstractionism logically completes the stage of development of ‘realism’ forms.

Although, I would be careful with the term abstractionism, and draw some line between it and abstraction.

22.02.2022 – Theory of Peripheral Meanings-Controlling Signs

One of the most significant achievements (or discoveries) during this project was the Theory of Peripheral Meanings-Controlling Signs, in which an attempt was made to give the dynamics of the development of meaning to the static image. The understanding of this necessity comes from the fact that any image in the picture, being static, is a priori false in relation to the depicted, since the sign (which is any display of an object or state), which replaces the referent, always lags in the process of reflecting the real state of things, and the referent always running away from us. Any semiotic sign that translates meaning is not a “what”, but a process – the process of conveying meaning – a state that is absolutely unthinkable in the category of static. Paradoxically, within the framework of visual art, it is possible to create a conditional effect of the dynamism of the objects and states under study, revealing in their visuality the process of developing meaning, which, as it were, has not yet been completed, but brings us closer to understanding the essence of things, and perhaps still continues. This is a very visual story.

According to the theory, such dynamism is achieved by placing the peripheral meanings-controlling signs in the pro-semantic zone of gray color, where gray gradations give rise to a visually perceptible dynamics of the development of meaning – both the referent of the meanings-controlling signs themselves and the central object depicted in chromatic colors (placed in the pre-conceptual dynamism of the background gray zone), supplemented and reinforced by meaningful signs. “In the shades of gray color of peripheral meanings-controlling signs, the dynamics of the development of meaning is revealed, although formally residing in the static nature of what is depicted” – www.niyazmamedov.com/art-signs#17-02-2016 .