Experience Cutting Across Medium

Installation art is experiential, right, the experience of being in/within the work, as opposed to viewing the work? The work, however, are still viewed (the phone and computer on the desk next to the stapler and tape dispenser are viewed) and can be dissected down to its elements. Each viewing offers a different experience, sometimes within a close continuum and sometimes more broadly ranging.

The best drawing pulls in the viewer, holds the wall, and strives to be experienced immersively. Sclupture holds the space (the spot and air and context where its installed) but can dominate the room/landscape to varying degrees, offering different experiences.

Degree of scale moderates the experience of a piece or set of pieces. One large piece like the mountain overwhelms. A lot of smaller pieces on a wall can be like votive candles or a series of windows or marks in themselves accumulating to the larger experience of a composition on the wall. A bruise. A scar. A tattoo. A mask. An adornment. A combination of some or all of these.

Sigh, and more on accumulation/conglomeration.

Sigh. Feeling passed and disconcerted today. A few years ago, I sent out proposals for a fishing line web piece that was about interfering with and framing perception of drawing in space. Unfortunately, the proposals were not successful.

Material World, at MassMoca, features seven artists using accumulation and other strategies with non-art materials to occupy and take over space/environment. Looks like an excellent show, though I probably will not get to Boston to see it.

One of the artists, Tobias Putrih, uses monofilament to occupy the space with finely tuned reflectivity and optics bordering on invisibility. The optics aspect reminded me of a piece I saw by Jesus Rafael Soto ages ago in Paris. The near invisibility of this piece (at least from the photo and description) strikes me as the most intriguing of the work because it's subtle. From the Catalogue link (black and white, unfortunately), most of the artists seems to take over through shear scale -- monumentally and literally occupying the space -- a not so surprising tactic.

One can accumulate any object/set of objects and scale up; one can string anything, including the "strings" themselves. Work through these means and methods has varying degrees of success, from little or none to a lot to arresting to unforgettable, same as any media.

Working on ArtPrize 2010 (II)

Working on ArtPrize 2010

Upcoming Installation and Exhibition

Installing at the Palette & Chisel tomorrow night --

Hub: Converging Divergence opens on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Palette & Chisel in Chicago.

• Opening Reception - Vernisage ...
  Palette & Chisel - 1012 North Dearborn, Chicago, IL...
  Saturday, October 17 at 5:30pm
• Presentation/ Panel
  Palette and Chisel
  Thursday, October 22 at 6:30pm
• Closing Event
  Palette and Chisel
  Saturday, October 24 at 5:30pm

Location:

1012 North Dearborn

Chicago, IL, 60610

Phone:

312-642-4149

Mon - Thurs:

10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Fri:

10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Sun:

12:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Tangled Web

Study and the Influence of One Element in Creating the Next Element

I am still working on elements for installing on dark green walls. I have two now.

My identically shaped elements based off the same reference icon or image typically are interchangeable, with minor and likely non-apparent differences inherent in being individually cut. But in this case, since I am building the interior color blocks, the elements differ and will differ in which parts of each will blend into the wall.

Once made, the first element existed, and I chose not to ignore it as I made the second element. Although I visually laid out the second with the first in mind, as I filled in areas with pieces, I moved the second form out of my line of sight to the first, relying on memory of the visual decisions I made to loosen the bias the identity of the first element had on the second.

With the elements created, I will play with different orientations and interactions.

UPDATE: The walls were not nearly the near Hunters green shade they took on in my head: they were a much grayer green, especially under the track lighting. The net result was less fading into the wall than imagined in the making of the pieces but still a demarkation of the dark areas as part of the darker complex of the wall compared to the lighter or brightly hued areas.

Study

I will be doing an installation in a space that has very dark green walls. I had not seen the space for over a year and had forgotten how dark the walls were. I have to consider different visibility strategies that are conceptually consistent with my work. Differences in the installation spaces help the work develop.

Painting vs. Installation

I read a curatorial comment, I forget where, that installations were "easier" than painting. The notion, as I understood, was that the artist does not need to dedicate as much time and effort struggling with and understanding his/her material.

There are things that I cannot yet get paint to do, and I do not have the same "feel" for paint that I have with some other materials and media. So, at first, the comment rings true. Until I step back and think further about whether the statement is really a fair criticism. There are things I cannot get the materials that make up installations to do, either. Paint, in many ways, is more malleable and flexible than materials that sometimes make up an installation. Paint also carries, for better or worse, the power and density of its history. The challenge of understanding the essential qualities of any material and leveraging, pushing or defying those qualities is an impetus for not working specifically or solely with paint.

Working extremely well with paint demands technical know that arranging found objects, for example, may not. However, arrangements of any material, found or otherwise, that work require compositional virtuosity, which comes out of drawing, painting and sculpting. There can be poor, shallow, uninteresting paintings as easily as there can be poor, shallow, uninteresting installations. It's all to easy to create one line work.

The Risk of Hardened Concepts.

One pitfall with verbalizing visual art is the risk of hardening the concept while the visuals drift from that concept. I feel some drift from what I have come to think is conceptually important to my work. I am less sure, or perhaps simply less comfortable, about whether my current work really connects to loss and retention of identity through transition and transformation. The elements perhaps don't come close enough to the edge of losing themselves. As I work to push the elements to the edge, I'm pushed back by an affinity for the material qualities of the elements.

So I am spending more time simply drawing on paper ... the solution perhaps is in the distraction.

Permanence and Impermanence Revisited and a Word about Process

My current installation comes down Sunday and the next one does not go up until October. The end of an exhibition, especially one in which the work is temporal, brings mixed feelings. On one hand, the piece has had its time in its space; on the other, one would always liked more people to experience it the way it is where it is, and not only from documentation or recreation.

Anticipating taking down the installation has focused me on for now on more permanent work -- ink drawings on archival surfaces are not so temporal. I've become acutely aware of a parallel between my process with these drawings and my process with my installations to the point where my awareness of the parallel feels as if it may well define the work: I am effectively installing vignettes on the drawing surface like I install elements in an space for an installation when I "draw" in space, only the vignettes don't lift off some time later. Not a surprising observation, of course, as we often engage the same conceptual thoughts and issues, no matter the medium or perhaps in search of the medium. I am not sure why I'm concentrating on the parallel.

To Locate Again: Some Installation Images

Dissect: How Definitions Applied

• form: "1. a. The shape and structure of an object. b. The body or outward appearance of a person or an animal considered separately from the face or head; figure. 2. a. The essence of something.b. The mode in which a thing exists, acts, or manifests itself; kind. *** [11] b. The resting place of a hare."

applied: display case, borrowed shapes

• 
  
• concept: "1 : something conceived in the mind : thought, notion; 2 : an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances."

applied: relocation, numerical delineation, permeability

• context: "1 : the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning; 2 : the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs : environment, setting.

applied: display case, arrangement, physical boundaries, reflection out of space.

To Locate Again: to establish or lay out in a new place

Finished installing my installation, To Locate Again: to establish or lay out in a new place, today.  It's a great site to install.  The gallery has full windows on two sides and is visible straight off the elevator.  The elevator is human operated like days long gone by!  The landmark building detail is quite a contrast to my brightly colored forms, which seem to inhabit more than the space as they reflect everywhere through the windows.

The installation responds to a theme that curators Glenn and Deborah Doerring have been highlighting this year:  "Integration =Form + Concept: Context".

Form:  Finestra as museum display case.  The artist redeploys artifact based drawings by relocating elements to other physical contexts.

Concept: Numbers accompanying the elements set an expectation of meaningful classification, which disordering the numbers tends to upend.

Context:  The artist questions our relationship to museum display and to interpretation by containing the viewers who breach the space as well as the redeployed element, challenging us to engage how context and objects integrate into interpretations presented to viewers.

Where/When:  Finestra Art Space, 410 S. Michigan Ave, #516, Chicago, Il.  Open Fri/Sat from 2 to 6 pm.  (to enter the gallery).  Finestra Art Space is in the Fine Arts Building, and the installation can be seen during building hours.   The reception is on Second Fridays at the Fine Arts Building -- August 14, 2009, from 5 to 9 pm.

In The Works

I am developing dance/movement oriented installation elements from repeatable units  (one identity) to combine with pre-existing installation elements drawn from artifactual icons, such as animals from rock art (another identity).  

For shapes to start with, I am looking to dress forms in Degas' paintings and pastels of dancers, and also based off these paintings, to isolate one body sectional form to serve dual roles as the upper and lower body.  For movement, I am working with flow movements inspired by those in Matisse's Dance, trying to perfect my own flows with limited forms, and continuing as I do to consider ways to employ animation strategies to relay movement in a still frame.

Installation: Ordered Groupings

Here are some images from my recent installation, Ordered Groupings. The horses play off an artifactual image, and the numbered pins play off of classifications and museum display of artifacts.

Shows

I have been on hiatus for a couple months...

My latest installation is up on a group show at Peter Jones Gallery through April 26, 2009. Gallery hours are from 3 to 6 pm on Sat. and Sun. with a closing reception on April 26 from 3 to 6 pm. The group is the Artists Breakfast Group, and the show is Caffeine III.

I'll also be demonstrating my work at Macy's on State Street in Chicago, as part of their Dream in Color event, this Friday, April 10, 2009 from 12 to 2 pm. (lower level).

Deterioration In Art

I've been thinking quite a bit about deterioration in art. It's natural, especially with when the art process involves a great deal of experimentation and envelope pushing.

Pollack's paintings supposedly shed chips (the paint was household paint, so made to fall apart really). I find the shedding of the work interesting.

The paint has come off classical statuary -- to the point that we view classical as white and unadorned.

Da Vinci's Last Supper is more myth/legend (not sure the proper term, really) than painting, since it started to deteriorate rather quickly and has been in-painted, etc.; yet the myth/legend is strong.

Cave paintings survived for thousands of years precisely because they were hidden from view; now, discovered and exposed, they are deteriorating.

Great buildings fall to time, weather, war, and new construction.

Some deterioration is ironic: fairly quick crackling in Mondrian's work undermines his utopian ideals.

Yet, old master paintings are valued in part because they managed to survive hundreds of years (some level of care taking by some set of people valuing the works enough to preserve them).

The art I showed at The Artist Project was based on scavenged images and materials, included decades old paper and yarn found in my childhood home after my mother's recent passing. Here are some stills from the video I took of my installation at The Artist Project:

What Comes of This





Nomad/Herd



Discards



Snuggles



The venue wasn't the best venue for my work, which is conceptual and tends toward the ephemeral. Live and learn.

Open Studio

Here's are close-up shots of a couple of the figurative elements for The Open Studio Project, Vessels with Souls, and an installation shot. The project has been extended by the city into December. I am now working on other constructions with the newspaper, without consideration for graphite or pigment surface imagery.

The graphite pulled the repeated Vessel figurative shapes together and engaged the dynamic I was after: at a distance, each shape appears dark and singular, but on closer inspection, both the newspaper layers and the graphite imagery layer reveal themselves. As my thinking progressed with each shape, I became more interested in using the woven paper to add quasi three dimensionality to the pieces; at the same time, I also became more interested in using the graphite to obscure as well as to accent when integrating the graphite imagery into the newspaper elements.

The butterfly was a bit of a surprise, beginning as a meditative exercise in interlocking pieces and growing organically into a form. At one point, I could see it as a shroud growing to fill the the expanse of the room, and yet, since Vessels has representational content, I felt a deep need to maintain a representational aspect to the developing form; hence, the form felt complete when it reached this stage. It can go on the wall and be suspended from the ceiling, as well as lay across the floor or other forms, taking on the shape from whatever supports it is given. I see many dimensional possibilities, which I am beginning to explore. How form possibilities engage a concept remains crucial. I plan to engage the expansive room shroud idea in some manner, letting it run its course without the confines of the larger installation concept, at a later date.

City of Chicago Open Studio

I am the Artist in Residence at the City of Chicago's Open Studio this month. The Open Studio gives the public the opportunity to watch an artist at work. I am working on the elements for an installation using woven newspaper figures as the surfaces for my imagery. My primary days will be M, W and Th from 9 to 6, and intermittent hours other days. The studio is beneath the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington -- access via elevator in the Cultural Center or through the pedway.

Two days into this, I don't yet have much up in the way of art. I sit behind a table, cutting and interweaving newspaper strips (after I read the paper, of course). Lots of cutting. Lots of interweaving. Staring at the wall/space and at some of my larger, imperfect scraps -- I do alot of staring -- gave me a idea for laying out a separate wall installation moving around a corner, related in general shapes/forms to the main work. Art is fluid that way. I'll be seeing what comes of the idea at the same time that those who stop in.

So far, most people that stop by have hovered outside the windows; a few have dared to enter and talk for a while, some about art and some about general events.