Delinquent Antics and Meta Irony in Art Practice
Matt Watt
Art is not something one makes. It is an ongoing negotiation with perception and observation – and therefore an attunement to the instability of:
To speak of ‘art-making’ is to impose teleology where none exists, to construct a sequence of beginning, middle, and end – where only process persists. My claim is that art is not a product but a methodological condition of the assumed ‘artist’ – it is a consequence rather than an intention. It is to me a sustained interrogation of the structures that govern visibility and interpretation. To engage with art sincerely is to misrecognise its nature; sincerity presupposes authenticity, but authenticity is the internalisation of external expectation. The art world thrives on this illusion, mistaking affect for intent, and intent for significance.
Artist Gerhard Marx reveals that cartography is not a science of representation but of abstraction – an imposition of order onto a spatial field that resists fixity. Maps do not function as mirrors of reality – they function as epistemological instruments, naively attempting to render the dynamic into the static. Artistic meaning operates in the same way, upheld by systems that manufacture legibility at the cost of complexity. If maps chase reality without ever arriving at it, art (and everything else) chases significance while deferring resolution. There is no destination, only the recursive gesture of positioning and repositioning within structures that remain indifferent to the pursuit of certainty.
Art practitioners do not impose meaning but instead witness its construction, its circulation, and eventually, its dissolution. The act of making is indistinguishable from the act of dismantling; to create is to participate in a system of signs whose function is to obscure their own arbitrariness. This echoes Derrida’s différance – the perpetual deferral of stable meaning, the recognition that the sign is always contingent, always slipping between presence and absence. To produce work that ‘means’ is to concede to the logic of institutional validation, where significance is measured by its alignment with prevailing discourse. Yet, to refuse this is not to stand outside the system, but to operate within a meta-interstice, aligning with Foucault’s concept of heterotopias – spaces that exist within dominant structures yet function according to different rules, revealing the limitations and contradictions of the systems they inhabit.
This condition aligns with existentialism’s rejection of prescribed purpose. Sartre’s notion of radical freedom insists that meaning is an invention, not a discovery – an arbitrary imposition onto an indifferent world. Camus’ absurdist hero recognises that to seek meaning is to engage in a futile endeavour, yet refuses to turn away, embracing the contradiction of a life devoid of inherent purpose. Similarly, Baudrillard’s critique of simulation exposes the self-referential nature of contemporary cultural production, where signs circulate independently of any external referent. The art world functions in a similar way: a closed system, perpetually reiterating its own significance while masking repetition as progress.
Yet to reject the system outright is to misunderstand its function. The performance of meaning persists whether one participates or not; critique and complicity are structurally indistinct. To create work that explicitly opposes institutional stagnation is to reaffirm its authority by positioning it as something worth opposing. Instead, one must navigate with detachment 1, recognizing the game without committing to its stakes. This is not apathy but methodological skepticism – a refusal to engage in the affective economy of sincerity, and therefore a recognition that the discourse of artistic meaning is perhaps more constructed than the work it seeks to define.
There can be no resolution or finality to this argument and one cannot seek alternatives, because alternatives imply a choice within a false dichotomy. There is only the continuous act of negotiation, the ongoing practice of movement without arrival. For me, to practice art is not to affirm its structures – it is to exist within them critically, shifting between the quest for meaning and its inevitable dissolution. My ‘practice’ is a way of seeing, a way of recognizing the artificiality of all systems of meaning, and therefore, a way of being. It does not offer an alternative because it does not believe in them – only in the continuous process of seeing and existing in the liminal space between critique and indifference. It is for this reason, that I can do what I want. Enjoy the party.
often mistaken for being ‘out of touch’ 1
(Watt, 2025)
© Matt Watt 2025. All rights reserved.