Atmospherism 

MANIFESTO

Atmosphere is not the space surrounding the work. Atmosphere is the work.

We reject the tyranny of the object: the painting that begins and ends at its edge, the sculpture that occupies a place, the image that insists upon being looked at.We are interested in that which cannot be contained.

A room before someone enters it.
A color that seems to have a temperature.
The pressure of a cloud.
The residue of an event.
The feeling that remains after looking away.

Atmospherism begins where form becomes climate

We do not compose environments.
We alter conditions.We don’t ask what is this object,? we wonder what is happening in its presence.We work with  interference, leakage, reflection, the shadow, noise, chance, temperature, scale, scent, silence, and time lapses.

We distrust permanence. A work may change as the light changes.
It may depend upon the movement of bodies. It may disappear into its surroundings, it can be altered by the passing of a faraway train- 

And just in that stance : Atmospherism happens when the work seems unfinished and the world continues to make it complete.

Between figure and ground,
                                  between material and immaterial,
                                                                      between intention and accident,
between intimacy and exposure,
                                    between control and collapse.

The frame is a climate boundary we Break it.

Color is not decoration. Color has weight.
Color has humidity. Color can recede, advance, stain, suffocate, illuminate.

We believe that space has memory.

Every surface carries traces of what has happened there. Every room is already an installation. Every body entering it becomes part of the composition.The spectator is not outside the work.

                                  The spectator is part of the climate

We reject  the demand that art has to explain itself.

Meaning may arrive late.
Meaning may contradict itself.
Meaning may evaporate.

Atmospherism is not a style. It is a condition. We paint the air. We sculpt the interval. We compose the distance. We give form to what form cannot hold. We do not make objects.
We make situations in which objects, bodies, light, memory, and perception become temporarily unstable.

The work begins when the certainty ends.