THE LIMINAL ABSTRACTION METHODOLOGY

A Philosophy of Revolt, Unstable Meaning, and Continual Becoming

Written by Clement Paulus

I. The Threshold is the Destination

Liminality is not a transition. It is existence itself.

Philosophy, art, and culture treat transition as something to be resolved—a phase before something complete. This is a lie.

Liminal Abstraction rejects the idea that meaning, identity, or artistic interpretation must be stabilized. It recognizes that all things exist in perpetual flux, refusing to be contained by systems that demand coherence and closure.

There is no final statement. Only the next rupture.

The traditional model of meaning is built on three falsehoods:

• That art is a finished object rather than a site of ongoing engagement.

• That identity is a fixed essence rather than a process of becoming.

• That meaning is inherent or preordained rather than constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed endlessly.

We reject these illusions.

The threshold is not a passage. It is the destination.

II. The Revolt Against Containment

The history of art, philosophy, and intellectual discourse is the history of containment—the process by which radical ideas are historicized, institutionalized, and neutralized.

• The avant-garde movements of the past—Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism—began as ruptures, only to be absorbed by the very institutions they sought to dismantle.

• The artist is turned into a brand. The work is commodified into a collectible artifact. The philosophy is flattened into an aesthetic trend.

Liminal Abstraction refuses this fate. It does not resolve into a singular meaning that can be neatly archived, cataloged, and sold. Instead, it remains in resistance, disrupting every attempt to finalize, categorize, or historicize it.

If it can be contained, it has already failed.

This is not just an artistic philosophy. It is an active method of revolt:

• Liminal Abstraction resists passive spectatorship.

• Liminal Abstraction denies market-driven validation.

• Liminal Abstraction engages institutions only to infect them from within.

III. The Viewer as a Necessary Participant

The traditional artist-viewer relationship is hierarchical: the artist creates, the viewer receives.

This model is dead.

Liminal Abstraction dismantles this hierarchy by forcing engagement.

The work is not a statement. It is a confrontation. The viewer does not passively receive meaning—they must construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct it themselves.

• Art is not given meaning.

• Art is where meaning is fought for, reshaped, and destroyed.

The audience is not a passive observer but an active participant in meaning-making.

Meaning does not reside within the work.

Meaning emerges from engaging with it.

IV. The Erasure of Fixed Identity

Western philosophy treats identity as something to be discovered—a core essence waiting to be unearthed.

This is false.

• Identity is not something you find—it is something you construct and reconstruct.

• Stability is an illusion—the self is an ever-changing negotiation between past, present, and future tensions.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Camus’ Absurd Hero, Jung’s Shadow Self—all point to the same truth:

To be fully human is to be unfinished, contradictory, and in constant transformation.

Liminal Abstraction demands an identity that does not settle. It demands that the artist, the viewer, and the critic exist in flux, resisting all imposed categories or expectations.

To define yourself is to limit yourself. To embrace contradiction is to become infinite.

V. The Rejection of Capitalist Meaning-Making

Capitalism has turned identity, art, and philosophy into commodities—things to be sold, owned, and archived.

• The artist becomes a producer of assets for the market.

• The work becomes an investment object for collectors.

• Meaning becomes a pre-packaged, digestible narrative for institutions.

Liminal Abstraction rejects this system by refusing to provide easily consumable meaning. It demands:

• Non-finality—No work is ever truly finished, and no interpretation is ever definitive.

• Instability—Exhibitions and works should evolve, decay, or shift in response to time and context.

• Non-ownership—The work should never fully belong to the market, the institution, or even the artist.

Capitalism reduces art to transaction.

Revolt by refusing to make it legible to capital.

VI. The Necessity of Institutional Disruption

Museums, galleries, and academic institutions are factories of containment.

• The art world, while claiming to embrace new movements, functions as a system of control—absorbing, branding, and neutralizing radical thought.

To enter an institution is to infect it. To be named, debated, or rejected is proof that it breathes.

To engage a critic is to make them part of the work itself.

To be absorbed is to subvert from within. Every attempt to contain it only generates new ruptures.

Liminal Abstraction does not seek resolution—it sustains contradiction.

Liminal Abstraction does not strive for certainty—it thrives in engagement.

It cannot be historicized into irrelevance because it refuses to be finalized into a static movement.

VII. The Commitment to Perpetual Becoming

• Liminal Abstraction is not a style.

• Liminal Abstraction is not a trend.

• Liminal Abstraction is a method of thought, engagement, and resistance.

If it stops evolving, it has already died.

If it can be easily explained, it has already failed.

Conclusion

• If you seek certainty, you will find nothing here.

• If you desire resolution, you have misunderstood.

• If you require passive meaning, you are not ready.

To engage with Liminal Abstraction is to become part of its process—to allow meaning to collapse, reform, and collapse again.

Meaning is unstable. Identity is unstable. Art is unstable.

This will not change.