The Anti-Statement: Making Art That Doesn’t Explain Itself
In every exhibition, grant application, or artist talk, we are asked to explain ourselves. To define. To interpret. To articulate intention.
As if the artwork itself isn’t enough. As if silence isn’t an answer.
This is the age of the artist statement, and while reflection can be useful, there’s an implicit demand in contemporary art culture:
“Tell us what it means or we won’t know how to look at it.”
But what if the best art doesn’t want to be explained? What if its power is precisely in what it withholds?
The Tyranny of the Explanation
Somewhere along the way, the art world began to value language over sensation. Conceptualism became dominant. Writing became currency. Meaning was something to be pinned down, justified, framed in theory.
And artists, especially those working in abstraction or public space, were increasingly expected to produce not just work, but discursive content.
This shift has made us smarter, more critically aware. But it has also created a world where:
Mystery is mistaken for vagueness
Feeling is considered insufficient
Ambiguity is a flaw, not a strategy
We’ve traded instinct for intellect and as a result, many works feel like essays with pictures.
The Case for Silence
There is a kind of freedom in not knowing. A liberation in standing before something that refuses to resolve; that resists summation.
Great art doesn’t just tell you something, it asks something of you. It makes you sit in discomfort. Wonder. Stillness. Feeling.
Artists like Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, Hilma af Klint, and Bridget Riley rarely spelled things out. Their work was not about message but presence. An experience to be felt, not solved.
This is not about obscurity for its own sake. It’s about trusting the visual. Trusting that form, rhythm, scale, and colour can speak in ways words cannot.
In My Own Practice
As an artist working with abstraction on a grand, public scale, I am often asked:
“What is it supposed to be?”
“What does it represent?”
“What’s the message?”
And while I sometimes speak to place, influence, or intention, the truth is: my work isn’t about one answer. It’s about sensation. It’s about creating visual languages that invite the viewer to complete the sentence themselves.
My compositions may draw from architecture, geometry, memory, movement but they are not diagrams. They are not metaphors with captions. They are spaces to inhabit, not arguments to parse.
I believe in making work that you can’t tweet, can’t reduce to a sentence, can’t fully translate. That is the point.
The Anti-Statement, Then, Is a Philosophy
It is not silence as avoidance. It is silence as power.
It says:
Let the viewer bring themselves to the work
Let the piece carry its own weight
Let there be space for uncertainty
It trusts the visual. It values sensation. It keeps open what too many try to close. In a culture obsessed with clarity, this is radical.
Let the Work Speak
Not all things need to be understood to be felt. Not all art needs to declare itself to be valid. Not every shape has to signify.
Sometimes, a curve is a breath. A line is a pause. A form is a feeling. And that’s enough.
So here’s to the anti-statement. To art that leaves room. To the mystery that lingers long after the words have faded.