Description and analysis of Beyond the Blackening

Beyond the Blackening explores perception, reality, and transformation through layers of material, symbolism and meaning. The work extends and reflects on the earlier work, The Blackening. (Fig.1) Evolving from a trompe l’oeil painting of The Blackening,  that extends into three-dimensional space with black-painted wooden batons, challenges the boundaries between image and object, physical and virtual, conscious and unconscious.  My practice of expanding the pictorial surface is a metaphor for transcending worlds. Traversing dimensions reflects a desire to move beyond a two-dimensional representation into an embodied experience. Creating spatial ambiguity by blurring the distinction between two-dimensional and three-dimensional reality destabilises assumptions about reality and representation, questioning the nature of perception. The work encourages reflection on how meaning and truth are constructed and experienced.

The symbolic process of blackening wood batons aligns with the alchemical nigredo stage, representing dissolution and darkness as the first phase of transformation. By referencing previous work, Beyond The Blackening continues the theme of transformation through iterative and recursive development. The recursive layering of works parallels the Jungian concept of individuation.

The questioning of perception and, by extension, the nature of reality, articulates the experience of encountering what lies beyond symbolisation and resists comprehension. This concept connects with the unpresentable experience of trauma and Lacan's Real, the sublime, and the uncanny. Beyond the Blackening mirrors how trauma disorients perception and identity. It functions as a liminal space that contemplates the unknowable core of experience, questioning the reliability of perception and destabilising the boundaries of reality.  Challenging perception disrupts familiar ways of seeing, allowing hidden or unconscious material to surface, which facilitates individuation.

References

Jung, C.G., Hull, R.F.C. and Jung, C.G. (2007) The archetypes and the collective consciousness. 2. ed., repr. London: Routledge (The collected works of C. G. Jung, 9,1).

Jung, C.G. and Jung, C.G. (1977) Mysterium coniunctionis: an inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press (The collected works of C.G. Jung, v. 14).

Kant, I. and Walker, N. (2008) Critique of judgement. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press (Oxford world’s classics).

Lacan, J. and Lacan, J. (2004) The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. Reprinted. London: Karnac Books.

Sigmund Freud (1919) ‘Freud the uncanny.pdf’.

The Postmodern Condition Explained (Lyotard, Jameson and Baudrillard) (2023). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M-mN7f2t-M (Accessed: 24 May 2025).