I’m interested in the notion of Nothing, and what nothing is? I imagine that when I look into darkness or pure black, the absence of light is the boundary of the universe, creating a memory of what it was like before Being.
My way of explore this within my art practice is to use materials such as mirrors to create infinite Being and Black 2.0 paint to create the illusion of Nothing.
The infinite reflections of light within a mirrored Icosahedron becomes Nothing. The contained Black 2.0 painted space within a Cube becomes Nothing. Our presence and the act of letting in light brings with it the conscious sense of Being.
Inspired by Johnny Golding, Professor of Philosophy & Fine Art at RCA, I read the book Science of Logic by Hegel, who describes the notion of Being as the indeterminate immediate, free in relation to essence and equal only to itself. This reflectionless being is being as it is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
Nothing is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought.
To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as being.
Nothing is therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.
Being and Nothing are distinct yet inseparable, passing over each other so that each immediately vanishes onto its opposite. Their truth is therefore becoming a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself.
This triadic development can be summarised as: Being + Nothing = Becoming
The title of my new art project Nothing is Immediate can be broken down into Nothing and Being are the same and equate to Becoming. Jean-Paul Sartre contends that nothingness relates to free consciousness and spontaneity. The ‘is’ relates to the limit and Immediate is now, the present now in space, time and geography.
Therefore, the translation is Free consciousness and spontaneity happens in the present moment, it is limited to now.
