Tuesday, November 30, 2010

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.

No comments: