The Arrival: On Abstraction

In the arrival there are no spoken words; there are no anecdotes or asides, no soliloquies or monologues, only faces and abstracted events depicted in a sequential derivative of Shaun Tan’s own imagination. Tan’s work stems from the dreams and perhaps, the subsequent nightmares of many a migrant throughout history as around the world today.

Exchanging reality for abstraction, Tan opens the doors without pointing any fingers, losing his grip with reality just enough as to touch upon the ephemeral experience and raw emotion of a human being who is despairingly confused and lost with the world around him.

Tan’s mercurially defined environments and substance for the world echo the social and emotional estrangement of the migrant. Certain environments and creatures seem at once threatening and awe inspiring; a sublime manifestation equated to that of dreams; though, moreover, often equated with reality.

Color has been subtracted, further enhancing the sublimity of the work. The de-saturation embodies the sensibility and aesthetic of black and white cyanotypes or daguerreotype process prints; often idolized by this generation as historical records of an invaluable time.

This treatment is thus, a paradox at once removing and attributing itself to reality. Succeeding in abstracting yet another layer of common reality, one that would prove beyond doubt far too easy to associate with certain countries or regions by the layman.
The humanist touch comes in the form of association; association amongst this generation with documents that embody the particular aesthetic. Amongst the digital media of the age, analogue black and white photos are seen as valuable and often times didactic documentations of history.

Therefore Shaun taps into a subconsciously constructed well of value. In another more sober and direct note, Tan’s photographs are not merely de-saturated they are treated in specific washes of warm tones. This warmth further adds a humanist touch as it simulates warmth and sunlight.

The trial to which Tan committed was to illustrate a work of paradoxical abstraction; abstraction to such a degree as to be sufficiently disengaged form personal diatribe in order to enable access to any and all readers and yet retained enough of a humanist foundation, within the characters and aesthetics, to balance the whole and hit close to home in an intrinsic nature.