Presentation at Farnborough College
For our professional practice we are presenting a short presentation about our work, development and futures to Farnborough College on Friday 13th January. We are speaking to a class of 30 students ranging from AS level to A2 and Access students. The talk will cover who we are, where we study, what we do and what our practice is. We will brief the students on our work has developed since studying art at A levels through to our current stylings. Then from there informing them about the possibilites you gage from art, where you are able to take it and what has benefited us from studying. I will talk about the career paths that can be taken and how we have exhibited through out the year away from the university forming our own group. It is a good opportunity to speak to these students as whilst I was in Sixth Form it would of been very helpful to hear a different perspective rather than just a tutor or teacher, a more current and easy to listen to talk that will hopefully inspire.
Presentation about my studio practice and what informs it
Presentation for Monday 12th December
Studio practice, theory and linear gallery proposal
Slide 1: Some slightly older pieces of work I have made that focus on the materiality of an image and the surface and textural current that runs through them.
Slide 2: A piece I painted to represent the touch and the simplicity of a mark. How it can be moved and altered to create new pieces within itself. I purposely chose a trip-tic, three panels of canvas to emphasis the concept and idea of move-ability, that from one turn or rotation you can generate multiple images from one, it is almost like a game where you continuously build and perform. I guess the art of it is in the moving, the physical act of it. In the same way that relational aesthetics is fabricated from the experience of it, relational art is about experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally
Slide 3: Artists who have used gesture in their work
Jasper Johns: His paintings are so richly textured, the images I love are the wax pieces and the heavily painted works with brushstrokes that look almost figurative. There is so much fullness and perplexity in his work. When you read an image we look for coherence and legibility, his work is so densely woven and internally complex, so the narrative is not always instant, you have to work to read the piece. His works has yes-no rhythms of fast and slow, thick and thin, intimacy and chill, they are a literal fusion of gestures and mark making.
Daniel Lefcourt: his work is minimal and nearly monochromatic, His work scrutinizes and dismantles the process of painting through the material, the subject matter, and the physical space the work is shown in.
Takesada Matsutani: Inspired by glue as a medium, is best known for his canvas reliefs utilizing blown air into vinyl glue to produce bulbous ridges and bodily shapes protruding from his paintings’ surfaces. “I quickly discovered its sensual quality and I would always strive for a certain sensuality in my work, coming from the materials themselves.”
Slide 4: Relational art offers services and experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. Bourriaud said “what is produced are connections with the world broadcast by object” meaning the art is to be understood collectively rather in the space of individual consumption;
Aesthetics theory judges an artwork on the basis of interhuman relations. Relational art addresses a new sense of connection between artists and their audience. It refers to artworks as open-ended, interactive and resistant to closure.
Slide 5: where emphasis is placed on the role of the viewer in the physical or conceptual realisation and reception of the artwork. Participatory Arts is the active participation of the viewer, where the role of collaboration in the realisation of an artwork is deemphasising the role of the artist as the only creator of the artwork, while building social bonds through communal meaning and activity. It breaks the wall between artwork and viewer.
Slide 6: the artist converted a gallery into a kitchen where he served Thai food, the artist invites the visitor to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurs the distance between artist and viewer. You aren’t looking at the art, but are part of it--and are, in fact, making the art as you eat
Slide 7: I wrote a piece that speaks about him and relational art and the way we view an image.
Tirvanija = relational art. The way that he cooks up an experience is the way that our eyes feast on an artwork.
Everything is an experience in itself, art is an experience that engulfs us as the spectators. It is sound and visuals, metaphorical and physically through the concept of the gaze. A feast for the eyes, an entrée and main course. The way we recognise an image is us understanding and us digesting it.
We as the viewer take the time to soak up the information, the narrative within the artworks are like a play; in my work I am trying to create this through the emphasis on textural and gestural imagery. Abstract artists craft works that are so densely woven with narrative and characters, it is like pulling a thread from a jumper that your grandma knitted, it unravels slowly as you pull at it, that is us as the spectator reading and understanding the meaning and perplexities of an image; it is us digesting a visual dinner for the eyes and mind.
Relational art > the mannerisms of relational art and the concepts of relational aesthetics that Bourriaud writes about follow the principles of audience participation and interaction.
Is viewing an image participation? Visual perception: it’s the onlookers observing a play, reading a book and sipping their wine. You come in contact with hundreds of tasks every day that require the simultaneous movements of looking and understanding what you are doing, this is how we view art, art is postmodern, its dimensional, it’s here and there and it’s a replica of then and now.
We automatically gaze upon such beauty around us without noticing, art is everywhere and always has been; these narratives within the artworks become like TV to us, they are our soap, our EastEnders, the Mona Lisa is Peggy Mitchell. The character is there, the visual perception and feeling you come to experience and identify with.
Art is our continuous play, it is a theatre production, a story that visually encapsulates a mass audience.
To view physically is to touch an image, this is how we find meaning. We picked up toys as infants to learn shape and colour, to develop our senses and discover why and how things and objects have importance. As adults we do this unremittingly without hesitation, in art we make contact with an image to touch the surface and seize our curiosity of what it may feel like, this is how we read visually the pictorial plane, to immerse ourselves.
As humans we want everything, we want to consume information about everything around us, about artwork we want to capsulate everything into a tiny bite of knowledge. Art is our dinner, Peggy Mitchell is edible and the Mona Lisa is a Fullblood Wagyu Tenderloin.
But who is to say they prefer their steak that way? Is the more expensive cut better because it is more acclaimed, or does Lidl’s frying steak still deserve recognition, reproduction is still art, everything is art, art is all around us. Steak for all.
Slide 8: His work are giant pieces of sculpture that insist on experience by viewers in both physical and visual terms.
Slide 9: ideas for new work, I want to make a large scale V shape or Z shaped board or wood sheet that will be textured on the inside on one half and on the other painted in a way that distorts/compromises our viewing, the idea is to walk inside it and be able to touch and really read the work. So the scale would be 2.5m long and 1.5m high so just a bit smaller than me.
Slide 10: linear gallery proposal, similar to the new concepts for work, it would be like a concertina shaped canvases all joined by hinges but textured heavily and painted/using wax or materials to bulk it out but only on the inside so you once again have to participate and physically view the work to understand the narrative inside it. The space is a narrow corridor so it would intervene with people walking by, it is forced in front of you to experience.
Studio practice, theory and linear gallery proposal
Slide 1: Some slightly older pieces of work I have made that focus on the materiality of an image and the surface and textural current that runs through them.
Slide 2: A piece I painted to represent the touch and the simplicity of a mark. How it can be moved and altered to create new pieces within itself. I purposely chose a trip-tic, three panels of canvas to emphasis the concept and idea of move-ability, that from one turn or rotation you can generate multiple images from one, it is almost like a game where you continuously build and perform. I guess the art of it is in the moving, the physical act of it. In the same way that relational aesthetics is fabricated from the experience of it, relational art is about experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally
Slide 3: Artists who have used gesture in their work
Jasper Johns: His paintings are so richly textured, the images I love are the wax pieces and the heavily painted works with brushstrokes that look almost figurative. There is so much fullness and perplexity in his work. When you read an image we look for coherence and legibility, his work is so densely woven and internally complex, so the narrative is not always instant, you have to work to read the piece. His works has yes-no rhythms of fast and slow, thick and thin, intimacy and chill, they are a literal fusion of gestures and mark making.
Daniel Lefcourt: his work is minimal and nearly monochromatic, His work scrutinizes and dismantles the process of painting through the material, the subject matter, and the physical space the work is shown in.
Takesada Matsutani: Inspired by glue as a medium, is best known for his canvas reliefs utilizing blown air into vinyl glue to produce bulbous ridges and bodily shapes protruding from his paintings’ surfaces. “I quickly discovered its sensual quality and I would always strive for a certain sensuality in my work, coming from the materials themselves.”
Slide 4: Relational art offers services and experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. Bourriaud said “what is produced are connections with the world broadcast by object” meaning the art is to be understood collectively rather in the space of individual consumption;
Aesthetics theory judges an artwork on the basis of interhuman relations. Relational art addresses a new sense of connection between artists and their audience. It refers to artworks as open-ended, interactive and resistant to closure.
Slide 5: where emphasis is placed on the role of the viewer in the physical or conceptual realisation and reception of the artwork. Participatory Arts is the active participation of the viewer, where the role of collaboration in the realisation of an artwork is deemphasising the role of the artist as the only creator of the artwork, while building social bonds through communal meaning and activity. It breaks the wall between artwork and viewer.
Slide 6: the artist converted a gallery into a kitchen where he served Thai food, the artist invites the visitor to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurs the distance between artist and viewer. You aren’t looking at the art, but are part of it--and are, in fact, making the art as you eat
Slide 7: I wrote a piece that speaks about him and relational art and the way we view an image.
Tirvanija = relational art. The way that he cooks up an experience is the way that our eyes feast on an artwork.
Everything is an experience in itself, art is an experience that engulfs us as the spectators. It is sound and visuals, metaphorical and physically through the concept of the gaze. A feast for the eyes, an entrée and main course. The way we recognise an image is us understanding and us digesting it.
We as the viewer take the time to soak up the information, the narrative within the artworks are like a play; in my work I am trying to create this through the emphasis on textural and gestural imagery. Abstract artists craft works that are so densely woven with narrative and characters, it is like pulling a thread from a jumper that your grandma knitted, it unravels slowly as you pull at it, that is us as the spectator reading and understanding the meaning and perplexities of an image; it is us digesting a visual dinner for the eyes and mind.
Relational art > the mannerisms of relational art and the concepts of relational aesthetics that Bourriaud writes about follow the principles of audience participation and interaction.
Is viewing an image participation? Visual perception: it’s the onlookers observing a play, reading a book and sipping their wine. You come in contact with hundreds of tasks every day that require the simultaneous movements of looking and understanding what you are doing, this is how we view art, art is postmodern, its dimensional, it’s here and there and it’s a replica of then and now.
We automatically gaze upon such beauty around us without noticing, art is everywhere and always has been; these narratives within the artworks become like TV to us, they are our soap, our EastEnders, the Mona Lisa is Peggy Mitchell. The character is there, the visual perception and feeling you come to experience and identify with.
Art is our continuous play, it is a theatre production, a story that visually encapsulates a mass audience.
To view physically is to touch an image, this is how we find meaning. We picked up toys as infants to learn shape and colour, to develop our senses and discover why and how things and objects have importance. As adults we do this unremittingly without hesitation, in art we make contact with an image to touch the surface and seize our curiosity of what it may feel like, this is how we read visually the pictorial plane, to immerse ourselves.
As humans we want everything, we want to consume information about everything around us, about artwork we want to capsulate everything into a tiny bite of knowledge. Art is our dinner, Peggy Mitchell is edible and the Mona Lisa is a Fullblood Wagyu Tenderloin.
But who is to say they prefer their steak that way? Is the more expensive cut better because it is more acclaimed, or does Lidl’s frying steak still deserve recognition, reproduction is still art, everything is art, art is all around us. Steak for all.
Slide 8: His work are giant pieces of sculpture that insist on experience by viewers in both physical and visual terms.
Slide 9: ideas for new work, I want to make a large scale V shape or Z shaped board or wood sheet that will be textured on the inside on one half and on the other painted in a way that distorts/compromises our viewing, the idea is to walk inside it and be able to touch and really read the work. So the scale would be 2.5m long and 1.5m high so just a bit smaller than me.
Slide 10: linear gallery proposal, similar to the new concepts for work, it would be like a concertina shaped canvases all joined by hinges but textured heavily and painted/using wax or materials to bulk it out but only on the inside so you once again have to participate and physically view the work to understand the narrative inside it. The space is a narrow corridor so it would intervene with people walking by, it is forced in front of you to experience.
Studio Practice Presentation Script
Presentation Script – Monday 10th October 10, 2016
Slide 1:
The idea of over production in the art world is something that occurs on a very regular basis, quantity now wins out over quality, and the value of art becomes less and less. Overproduction has become art’s new natural mode. Where painting used to be full of visual excitement, often they become depiction of empty space that doesn’t allow the painting to breathe, but seems more like an area that the artist hasn’t had quite enough time to deal with adequately. Emptiness generally seems to be an issue that artists face more so than anything else.
Slide 2:
Value in art is subjective to the person, if you look at the masterpieces throughout time you typically go back to the da Vinci’s and the Michelangelo’s. The Mona Lisa is critically acclaimed to be the most valuable piece of art of all time, not just through worth or stature but skill. The Mona Lisa is known for her face, her smile and eyes. You do not notice the background or minor details within the image, so with my new practice I am thinking about the absence of value. Taking out the unseen and making it the centerpiece.
Slide 3:
Duchamp was a chain smoking sphinx of art, he began as a painter, then around 1913 became attracted to the unassuming everyday objects to which he began presenting as ready-made artworks. Most famously, the urinal. “Taste is the taste enemy of art… it’s hard to find an object that has no attraction from the aesthetic angel. Of course humor was introduced”. Duchamp was making a point that not everything was art but anything COULD be art, why? Because the object didn’t matter anymore, it was the concept, the idea, and that was the beginning to what we called conceptual art. His audacious acts opened the floodgates to the conceptual art world.
Affect theory: is about the experience of art, to which Duchamp challenges
Slide 4:
With art being so subjective and the value of art often defined by how conceptual a piece is, it naturally traces back to one of the founders of conceptual art. Conceptual art is something that challenges most people, asking where the value and meaning is.
Manzoni mocked the art world, In May 1961 he produced 90 unique sculptures, he then tinned, signed and number them. It was his own shit. The label comes in four different languages stating 30g net, so if you thought conceptual art was crap, there was the proof. Manzoni declared that each tin was worth its weight in gold. You may ask who would buy this, but last year, Christie’s sold ‘number 54’ for £182,500 making it gram for gram almost 200 x more expensive than gold! This is the concept of value that intrigues me so much!
Slide 5:
Overproduction is a complicated syndrome. Matisse said that an artist’s worst enemy is his own bad paintings. Artists become factories producing work, they are a successful system has been set up so that works can be produced in a relatively mass way, and what you see tells you that. There is no visual conflict. Overproduction is no mystery. It’s caused by the behavior of money, by all sorts of financial factors. No artist is going to say: “I won’t take the $50m, thank you; I wish to preserve exquisiteness.”
Manipulation of the art market – I believe art is all about branding, if your brand reaches the heights of Pepsi then you have succeeded; however, this need to succeed makes artists create work that is purely for the demise of selling. ‘There is no such thing as a pure artist because purity of artistic practice in the modern art market would most likely incur the wrath of that great capitalist tradition, ‘market freedom’ the freedom that equates to artists as ‘freedom to starve’.
Slide 6:
Value: You’d think the value of art would depend on its aesthetic value; a picture you enjoy looking at on your wall. Almost all primary art sales—art bought from the artist as opposed to another collector—occurs through art galleries. Galleries set taste and prices—sets is actually an understatement. Galleries manipulate prices to an extent that would be illegal in most industries. In any market, price manipulation causes distortions, shortages, and inefficiency. But in its own peculiar way the primary art market functions; contemporary art generates tens of billions of dollars of revenue each year.
The nature of art as a commodity inherently makes efficient prices, meaning prices that reflect all available information about value, impossible. Value is subjective; the intrinsic value of a painting is paint and canvas—beyond that value is often a matter of taste.
Slide 7: Artists influence, I think with the idea of value taken out of the equation, I have been looking more at the surface and texture of an image. Artist Jason Martin effects oscillations between sculpture and painting, with the vigor of action painting but a controlled hand. These raw, worked surfaces find their equal and opposite making them a rendering of mass and of surface.
Slide 8:
American painter and printmaker. Although he had reacted against the domination of Abstract Expressionism, he had no intention of reintroducing realism. His work is often associated with Conceptual art, but although organized into non-representational systems, it is fundamentally a quest for pictorial expression. Ryman reduced his painting to the strict minimum: the square format and the color white. He permutated and varied these constants by manipulating scale and texture.
Slide 9:
My work, I recently did an exhibition is Camberwell which I didn’t really think about the artwork, it was just to make a piece of art. Now developing my practice to focus on the idea of value and the absence of value I will be creating a series of works that are deemed the most prized in the art world, stripping them to an alternative look and creating the other end of the spectrum with the unfocused becoming the focused. Still with an abstract style and concentrating on the canvas and the affect it has on the audience. How it is read compared to the masterpieces of our time.
Slide 1:
The idea of over production in the art world is something that occurs on a very regular basis, quantity now wins out over quality, and the value of art becomes less and less. Overproduction has become art’s new natural mode. Where painting used to be full of visual excitement, often they become depiction of empty space that doesn’t allow the painting to breathe, but seems more like an area that the artist hasn’t had quite enough time to deal with adequately. Emptiness generally seems to be an issue that artists face more so than anything else.
Slide 2:
Value in art is subjective to the person, if you look at the masterpieces throughout time you typically go back to the da Vinci’s and the Michelangelo’s. The Mona Lisa is critically acclaimed to be the most valuable piece of art of all time, not just through worth or stature but skill. The Mona Lisa is known for her face, her smile and eyes. You do not notice the background or minor details within the image, so with my new practice I am thinking about the absence of value. Taking out the unseen and making it the centerpiece.
Slide 3:
Duchamp was a chain smoking sphinx of art, he began as a painter, then around 1913 became attracted to the unassuming everyday objects to which he began presenting as ready-made artworks. Most famously, the urinal. “Taste is the taste enemy of art… it’s hard to find an object that has no attraction from the aesthetic angel. Of course humor was introduced”. Duchamp was making a point that not everything was art but anything COULD be art, why? Because the object didn’t matter anymore, it was the concept, the idea, and that was the beginning to what we called conceptual art. His audacious acts opened the floodgates to the conceptual art world.
Affect theory: is about the experience of art, to which Duchamp challenges
Slide 4:
With art being so subjective and the value of art often defined by how conceptual a piece is, it naturally traces back to one of the founders of conceptual art. Conceptual art is something that challenges most people, asking where the value and meaning is.
Manzoni mocked the art world, In May 1961 he produced 90 unique sculptures, he then tinned, signed and number them. It was his own shit. The label comes in four different languages stating 30g net, so if you thought conceptual art was crap, there was the proof. Manzoni declared that each tin was worth its weight in gold. You may ask who would buy this, but last year, Christie’s sold ‘number 54’ for £182,500 making it gram for gram almost 200 x more expensive than gold! This is the concept of value that intrigues me so much!
Slide 5:
Overproduction is a complicated syndrome. Matisse said that an artist’s worst enemy is his own bad paintings. Artists become factories producing work, they are a successful system has been set up so that works can be produced in a relatively mass way, and what you see tells you that. There is no visual conflict. Overproduction is no mystery. It’s caused by the behavior of money, by all sorts of financial factors. No artist is going to say: “I won’t take the $50m, thank you; I wish to preserve exquisiteness.”
Manipulation of the art market – I believe art is all about branding, if your brand reaches the heights of Pepsi then you have succeeded; however, this need to succeed makes artists create work that is purely for the demise of selling. ‘There is no such thing as a pure artist because purity of artistic practice in the modern art market would most likely incur the wrath of that great capitalist tradition, ‘market freedom’ the freedom that equates to artists as ‘freedom to starve’.
Slide 6:
Value: You’d think the value of art would depend on its aesthetic value; a picture you enjoy looking at on your wall. Almost all primary art sales—art bought from the artist as opposed to another collector—occurs through art galleries. Galleries set taste and prices—sets is actually an understatement. Galleries manipulate prices to an extent that would be illegal in most industries. In any market, price manipulation causes distortions, shortages, and inefficiency. But in its own peculiar way the primary art market functions; contemporary art generates tens of billions of dollars of revenue each year.
The nature of art as a commodity inherently makes efficient prices, meaning prices that reflect all available information about value, impossible. Value is subjective; the intrinsic value of a painting is paint and canvas—beyond that value is often a matter of taste.
Slide 7: Artists influence, I think with the idea of value taken out of the equation, I have been looking more at the surface and texture of an image. Artist Jason Martin effects oscillations between sculpture and painting, with the vigor of action painting but a controlled hand. These raw, worked surfaces find their equal and opposite making them a rendering of mass and of surface.
Slide 8:
American painter and printmaker. Although he had reacted against the domination of Abstract Expressionism, he had no intention of reintroducing realism. His work is often associated with Conceptual art, but although organized into non-representational systems, it is fundamentally a quest for pictorial expression. Ryman reduced his painting to the strict minimum: the square format and the color white. He permutated and varied these constants by manipulating scale and texture.
Slide 9:
My work, I recently did an exhibition is Camberwell which I didn’t really think about the artwork, it was just to make a piece of art. Now developing my practice to focus on the idea of value and the absence of value I will be creating a series of works that are deemed the most prized in the art world, stripping them to an alternative look and creating the other end of the spectrum with the unfocused becoming the focused. Still with an abstract style and concentrating on the canvas and the affect it has on the audience. How it is read compared to the masterpieces of our time.
CEP presentation SPIDER GIRL
About the project is in the curator section of the blog, here is the presentation and my notes on what happened.
I started looking through local amateur dramatic groups and societies, local drama schools and theater groups, for performance artists. Sending out our brief to see if any interest would arise, unfortunate for us, due to it being half term there was little response or previous commitments had been made.
Leaflets- Making leaflets Xara designed we handed them around Trafalgar Square, promoting the artist and explaining about the project trying to gain an audience and ask if they wanted to join the crawl. The answer was always no I do not want to crawl on a Friday afternoon!
Documentation- We filmed from a variety of angles to ensure we captured the crawl from multiple points of view to create a wider impact for the viewer. We had a go-pro to capture movement as well as four of us walking and film as they took off. The filming from my perspective I thought looked great as it had the noise from the square and chatter of passerby, the music and business all adds to the atmosphere of London.
Script for presentation = Lydia - concept
John - proposal and artist
Katrina - space
Xara - performance
Lily - documentation
I started looking through local amateur dramatic groups and societies, local drama schools and theater groups, for performance artists. Sending out our brief to see if any interest would arise, unfortunate for us, due to it being half term there was little response or previous commitments had been made.
Leaflets- Making leaflets Xara designed we handed them around Trafalgar Square, promoting the artist and explaining about the project trying to gain an audience and ask if they wanted to join the crawl. The answer was always no I do not want to crawl on a Friday afternoon!
Documentation- We filmed from a variety of angles to ensure we captured the crawl from multiple points of view to create a wider impact for the viewer. We had a go-pro to capture movement as well as four of us walking and film as they took off. The filming from my perspective I thought looked great as it had the noise from the square and chatter of passerby, the music and business all adds to the atmosphere of London.
Script for presentation = Lydia - concept
John - proposal and artist
Katrina - space
Xara - performance
Lily - documentation
Presentation March 7th
Presentation script
Slide 1 ‘’Redefine your perspectives. Think in terms of the whole, not simply its parts. “ Josh Goldberg Slide 2 developing my studio practice from the figurative forms of art to the literal forms of art. Studying new artists who use systems, pattern and structures and architecture to produce geometric abstraction. Shape in its simplest formation, together creating complex patterns and optical illusions. It's about the visual perception in response and in relation to patterns. The way colour and shape affect our understanding of an image, our sight of visual plane and our responsive mind. Slide 3 I was reading Turps banana magazine and came across an article about abstract painting, it talks about the idea of critical theory in art, and how calling art theory critical theory means you only think about how it embodies ideology, which limits it. Through the years critical theory has become like a universal knowledge or language for those who study it. When you say critical it adds an air of authority to it, as I’m talking to you now, you probably think I’m sound and knowledgeable, however… definitely not. Art to me relies heavily on the unwritten knowledge, where the physical act is what teaches you, where you teach yourself. Especially in abstract art, it is about the emotion behind it building up quality and identification of the piece. Slide 4 Abstract art is defined as, ‘’Expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance, as justice and speed… relating to the formal aspect of art, emphasizing lines, colours, generalized or geometric forms especially with reference to their relationship to on another.” For example An object, building or person is an collection of individual properties that you can list; a building becomes a window, bricks, and tall blocks, shapes that separate like list of ingredients, those separated forms can be substituted with another making it into an abstract formation. Like a person, their eyes, ears, or nose categorizes them, or fruit, a cherry is defined for its redness, sweetness and shine. They are generalized into geometric forms. Singly they may seem useless but together they create something. Slide 5 Of course, going back to Roland Barthes – an image has a meaning we’re allowed and we expect to notice but it also has a sort of subliminal message designed to reinforce the values of whoever is in charge. Semiology is that task of revealing these hidden meanings, and in my work, these deconstructed images then reformed as a whole created that sign. That thing you recognize, a building or form of architecture, the images create a language that the audience is being encouraged to understand, so that sense of critical theory is what supports geometric art. But Roland Barthes is boring so let’s talk about reality. Slide 6 There is also the idea of deconstruction and reconstructing reality, the present subjects and objects we focus when painting, breaking them apart and reforming them in their simplest forms, this is a minimalist view and in turn a modern view. Modern philosophy and science are based on the idea that the world of appearances is an illusion that both reveals and conceals an underlying reality. Another expression of these ideas can be seen in the poststructuralist view that texts are a mere play of appearances that only create the illusion that they refer to some underlying meaning or objective reality. For Roland Barthes, the text that claims to open a window onto the world is false. In reality, the text is merely a play of signs, a surface without depth, which is there to be explored, toyed with, and expanded on, in the act of reading, it’s a form of semiotic analysis. In art, it is characterized by fragmentation, an interest in manipulating a structure's surface, skin, shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of architecture, such as structure. The finished visual appearance has a deconstructivist style and is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos. = geometric abstraction. |
Slide 7 on Deconstruction as an Aesthetic Theory
Language as a series of physical marks that operate in the absence of the speaker. These claims can be interpreted so that ‘text’ becomes ‘art work’ and ‘physical mark’ the brush stroke on a canvas. The speaker is now the artist and the futility of writing is translated into the very real work of art; the artist’s intent; symbolism (which makes up the language of art). Slide 8+9 Looking at architecture from around the world, the interiors and exteriors that stand out. Architectural geometry is an area of research which combines applied geometry and architecture, which looks at the design, analysis and manufacture processes. It lies at the core of architectural design and strongly challenges contemporary practice. Slide 10 but it’s not just buildings, the way that Francis bacon deconstructed faces, distorting them into their forms, it works the same way. Slide 11 Bacon frequently employed circles and rectangles as abstract substitutes for the architecture and furniture, and also as a ground for his figures. This can be seen in Study of George Dyer from 1969. George Dyer’s twisted figure is echoed in the crumpled newspaper at his feet and the splayed legs of his chair while the rest of the space is a set of semi-rational geometric forms. It becomes very personal with the way you pull apart a face or figure, the emotion behind is forced to the canvas through the way the image is created. Slide 12 Previously I focused on that figurative side of distortion but have progressed into this side of painting, and in the crit shows I changed my style completely but I can still relate them through the use of shape using visual perception to see the images as a whole rather than in pieces. With the audience is all subjective, the conceptual art you create will be understood differently from one person to another. Slide 13 I was reading sol lewitts sentences on conceptual art, he says ‘’A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.’’ So Perception is subjective and Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions. Slide 14 at some point I would like to do some sculpture work but would to also go back to slightly more figurative work as well and just experiment with this idea of deconstruction. |