Wayfaring
Abstraction does not concern itself with literal representation of the objective, visible world. Yet, paradoxically, because every sensation derives from it, the visible world must be its source. Abstraction, then, at the least, makes reference to salient features of the world as it presents itself to our senses. But to say, ‘presents itself,’ is too simplistic a phrase; because that implies a passivity in both the world and in the processes of sensation. Recent theories of cognitive psychology strongly suggest the perception collaborates with the world in quite intimate ways. Perception is an action, and as with all actions, it both has effect ON the world, and is effected BY the world. Abstraction, as in Loehr’s paintings, is the record of an interaction between perception and the world.
The world makes perception what it is; but perception also makes the world what it is. Or, to put it in terms of the classical Greek philosophers and astronomers - if appearances are to be saved, if what appears to perception is to have a meaningful relationship to its appearance to perception, then, what we call the world must be understood as a collaboration between the actions of our bodies on the world, and the world’s actions on our bodies. The only way to save appearances is to record them as two-sided actions; or, as performances of the world on our minds, AND of our minds on the world.
Abstraction in art aims to release us from the restraints of ‘meaning’; from reason’s determination to fix the world and its objects, places, and events in singular explanations and unchanging interpretations. It aims to restore to the world its wonder and enchantment by releasing it from the grip of reason which aims to confine it with its laws and formulae, with its categories and taxonomies, with its diagrams and maps that pin it to its Latin names like dead butterflies that can no longer fly.
Loehr’s paintings release us from the limiting effects of reason; they are records of world-perception, interactive performances. They release us from the limits of reason’s cartography that allow only for navigation by dead reckoning by plotting a course from A to X on the numerical grid of latitude and longitude by drawing a line with a ruler. In the worlds of Loehr’s painting dead reckoning is impossible; instead, we must navigate by wayfaring, by following our senses one mark or sign at a time; first from A to B, then from B to C, until we eventually DISCOVER our way, hopping from one island in November when trees bloom with red flowers to another in December where the wind blows from southeast to northwest and huge waves crash against ocre cliffs, until eventually we find our way from V to X.
Rather than limiting the world to singular meanings, Loehr’s paintings increase them to the point of meaninglessness. We cannot say what they are, what they are about, that they represent some specific thing or experience or emotion. They require that we, the viewers, abandon dead reckoning and become wayfarers in an ocean of multiple meanings; where it is up to us to discover a way through their thousands of islands without a map. It is up to us to discover what is Bedeutung in them, and only through that Bedeutung discover their value to which we can only then GIVE them their resonant ‘meanings.’ And there will always be multiple meanings in every Loehr painting, in the same way no musical note is pure but vibrates between several microtones and grace notes, never coming to rest on a single pitch until it is no longer a note at all and becomes a perfect stillness. Even then it can only approximate silence because it remains a vibration in our memory.
Still, much of the world is to be found in Loehr’s paintings. One of his remarkable talents is that of a mimic or a ventriloquist. The red chaos of chills filling a shallow woven basket as they dry in the hot Indian afternoon sun at the base of a pink or turquoise colored building, is present. As is a bright orange hemispherical basket lying upside down on green grass. The white lungis and colored sarongs worn by men in South India, the patterned saris worn but its women, are materially present in the hand woven Indian cotton fabric on which the paintings in this exhibition are painted. As Loehr himself has said: ‘We live in a world where art can use the materials of everyday life; where composition is non-formal and the search for one meaning is irrelevant.’ One importance Loehr gives to his work is that the gallery is not their final destination; that they will travel to other places, as they have traveled from other places, to the homes of their buyers where they become part of their lives, where they take on entirely new kinds of importance and are given new meanings, perpetually. Because their abstraction allows them a freedom to change as the viewer changes, as much as with the shifting light of everyday and through the seasons.
Abstraction does not concern itself with literal representation of the objective, visible world. Yet, paradoxically, because every sensation derives from it, the visible world must be its source. Abstraction, then, at the least, makes reference to salient features of the world as it presents itself to our senses. But to say, ‘presents itself,’ is too simplistic a phrase; because that implies a passivity in both the world and in the processes of sensation. Recent theories of cognitive psychology strongly suggest the perception collaborates with the world in quite intimate ways. Perception is an action, and as with all actions, it both has effect ON the world, and is effected BY the world. Abstraction, as in Loehr’s paintings, is the record of an interaction between perception and the world.
The world makes perception what it is; but perception also makes the world what it is. Or, to put it in terms of the classical Greek philosophers and astronomers - if appearances are to be saved, if what appears to perception is to have a meaningful relationship to its appearance to perception, then, what we call the world must be understood as a collaboration between the actions of our bodies on the world, and the world’s actions on our bodies. The only way to save appearances is to record them as two-sided actions; or, as performances of the world on our minds, AND of our minds on the world.
Abstraction in art aims to release us from the restraints of ‘meaning’; from reason’s determination to fix the world and its objects, places, and events in singular explanations and unchanging interpretations. It aims to restore to the world its wonder and enchantment by releasing it from the grip of reason which aims to confine it with its laws and formulae, with its categories and taxonomies, with its diagrams and maps that pin it to its Latin names like dead butterflies that can no longer fly.
Loehr’s paintings release us from the limiting effects of reason; they are records of world-perception, interactive performances. They release us from the limits of reason’s cartography that allow only for navigation by dead reckoning by plotting a course from A to X on the numerical grid of latitude and longitude by drawing a line with a ruler. In the worlds of Loehr’s painting dead reckoning is impossible; instead, we must navigate by wayfaring, by following our senses one mark or sign at a time; first from A to B, then from B to C, until we eventually DISCOVER our way, hopping from one island in November when trees bloom with red flowers to another in December where the wind blows from southeast to northwest and huge waves crash against ocre cliffs, until eventually we find our way from V to X.
Rather than limiting the world to singular meanings, Loehr’s paintings increase them to the point of meaninglessness. We cannot say what they are, what they are about, that they represent some specific thing or experience or emotion. They require that we, the viewers, abandon dead reckoning and become wayfarers in an ocean of multiple meanings; where it is up to us to discover a way through their thousands of islands without a map. It is up to us to discover what is Bedeutung in them, and only through that Bedeutung discover their value to which we can only then GIVE them their resonant ‘meanings.’ And there will always be multiple meanings in every Loehr painting, in the same way no musical note is pure but vibrates between several microtones and grace notes, never coming to rest on a single pitch until it is no longer a note at all and becomes a perfect stillness. Even then it can only approximate silence because it remains a vibration in our memory.
Still, much of the world is to be found in Loehr’s paintings. One of his remarkable talents is that of a mimic or a ventriloquist. The red chaos of chills filling a shallow woven basket as they dry in the hot Indian afternoon sun at the base of a pink or turquoise colored building, is present. As is a bright orange hemispherical basket lying upside down on green grass. The white lungis and colored sarongs worn by men in South India, the patterned saris worn but its women, are materially present in the hand woven Indian cotton fabric on which the paintings in this exhibition are painted. As Loehr himself has said: ‘We live in a world where art can use the materials of everyday life; where composition is non-formal and the search for one meaning is irrelevant.’ One importance Loehr gives to his work is that the gallery is not their final destination; that they will travel to other places, as they have traveled from other places, to the homes of their buyers where they become part of their lives, where they take on entirely new kinds of importance and are given new meanings, perpetually. Because their abstraction allows them a freedom to change as the viewer changes, as much as with the shifting light of everyday and through the seasons.