I point out that my interest lies in tactile feelings, sensations, colour and influence of digital technologies on the man. I looked at my successes from the previous four parts. As a result, most of my works is a mix of mediums. It is a combination of sculpture and painting, video and static objects, natural and artificial, physical and virtual, and colour plays a central role in it.
Therefore, I decided to continue searching for myself the boundaries between sculpture and painting; physical and virtual; as well as with the meaning of colour.
I organized the analysis into groups which formed during my work:
- flatness and volume - these are works with the object Ball and Abstract form
- colour is a work with a mesh
- materials and their combination
- drawing process which turned to be a sculpture
- the illusion of digital glitch
- projection and video.
Some works are successful, and some are not good.
For example, my first work where I opened the canvas and used balls as objects and as an illusion. I looked at Lucio Fontana and his cuts.
Lucio Fontana, Galleria Incontro [Photography] At: https://www.galleriaincontro.it/it/artisti-opere/lucio-fontana (Accessed 09.12.2020)
Fontana went beyond the flatness, converting the canvas to an object. But in my case what I am trying to do in 2020. Why repeat what was already proven about 70 ago. In the end, the idea of mixing real balls with painted could give more, but I think I went overboard with holes and threads and balls. There are too many ideas on the same plane. So, I destroyed this work the next day.
Or another aspect that experts will probably notice is some incompleteness in my works. For example, in the work 6 Sculpture as a drawing, I fixed colourful elements on the needles, but of course, for the durable artwork, I would need to fix it with nails. (which I finished later)
Photos from 11.12.2020
Or another, work 5 Materials. Here the white gypsum is not fixed to the wood, piece of tree does not have protection, and the whole composition does not have support for the wall. But I have a solution for all of these issues just it is not my focus now.
Sometimes lack of perspective, for example, to show my works in the gallery make me work on 70% because 30% I need for the presentation – white wall, stands, good material… As most likely, no one will see my works I do not need to invest in expensive material. So during the course, I was focused rather on ideas and methods, but I am aware of this 30%!
Photos from 10.12.2020
Before it looked like that:
For the works with balls, I found many artists working with this object.
ART + Science: Magic: Thomas Jackson By Linda Alterwitz. July 4, 2018 [Photography] At: http://lenscratch.com/2018/07/art-science-magic-4/ (Accessed 09.12.2020)
Atomic: full of love, full of wonder 2005 Artist Nike Savvas Australia (1964) [Installation] At: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/316.2006/ (Accessed 09.12.2020)
Some, focusing on the new effects from the objects placed in unusual places, some create colour fields where one element become an atom as a beginning of the bigger structure.
In my work, I was challenging both painting and sculpture. In this work, objects pretend to have a ball, but it is just an illusion. And if an artist wants to bring confusion in the understanding of the Viewer, then the best way to do so with new technologies. All is a lie, and there is no red ball.
For analysis of the object as an abstract form, I was looking at Sarah Meyers Brent. I love how the artist mixes oil colours and everyday cloth and objects. On one side, she does it very direct applying all this mass on the canvas. But on the other hand, such different things begin to tell the same story, complementing each other with colour and shape and context.
Sarah Meyers Brent Mommy Loves Me. Paint Rags and Mixed Media on Canvas 36"x48" 2014 At: https://sarahartist.com/artwork/3441282-Mommy-Loves-Me.html (Accessed 09.12.2020)
Many other Artists I mentioned separately in the description for each of the work.
I want to mention about My List of Favourite Artist which I formed since the beginning of this course. They are my teachers, they are always in my head if I need some help.
· Robert Rauschenberg the biggest inspiration for me for the combination of oil paint and objects.
· Richard Wentworth is important for me as he knows how to make a point through materials.
· I love works of Phyllida Barlow as she makes it bold, and she embodied sensations into the material.
· Tony Cragg makes it so simple and clean as the only man can do, as a woman has too many thoughts.
· Impressing works from Janet Echelman stimulate me to find my way as she did.
· I am envy to Yasuaki Onishi as he represented winter in a way as I feel it in Russia. His poetry in works with film and hot-glue reminds me always that each nation can have a specific cultural touch.
· Maria Bartuszova loves plaster how no one.
· Lynda Benglis is important for me as she also works with phosphorescent materials.
My work has evolved, and in my research something similar or solving some issues on my way, I came across very similar artworks. Or rather, pieces that look the same outwardly but differ from each other. I decided to dwell here on some of them in more detail.
My work and
Richard Tuttle, The Place In The Window, II, #2, 2013 at Marian Goodman, Paris. Dyed cotton pulp, wire, mesh wall sculpture At: http://moussemagazine.it/richard-tuttle-mariangoodman/ (Accessed 29.11.2020)
The work of Richard Tuttle is displayed on the wall. The dyed cotton is organized on a cut metal mesh. At first glance, it may seem that this is the face of a person with black eyebrows and a brown nose. But if you look longer, the coloured mass remains just coloured spots on the grate. The artist is trying to create something new that does not exist before.
“To make something which looks like itself is, therefore, the problem, the solution. To make something which is unraveling, its own justification is something like a dream. There is no paradox, for that is only a separation from reality. We have no mind, only its dream of being, a dream of substance when there is one”. Richard Tuttle « Work is Justification for the Excuse”, in Documenta 5 (Kassel, Germany, 1972), section 17, page 77. [online] At: http://moussemagazine.it/richard-tuttle-mariangoodman/ (Accessed 29.12.2020)
In Tuttle's work, it is impossible to understand what material the colour is made of. In my work, the stains of construction foam are quite obvious. This is where my work loses because the chosen material is simple and obvious.
My idea of transferring pure colour to the wall here also intersects with Richard Tuttle's.
«The wire backing provides a 'canvas' on which Tuttle 'paints' with a palette of multicolored, fibrous strands, bringing associations of painting, sculpture, and mixed-media assemblage to the final work.» Richard Tuttle [online] At: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/tuttle-richard/artworks/ (Accessed 29.12.2020)
I saw the structure of the canvas in the metal mesh, and the colour seemed to penetrate through it and go beyond. On the one hand, one can agree with this, but on the other hand, Tuttle's grid is much more dynamic than my version. It is inflexible, does not let space in and clearly limits its form.
So if I decided to continue with this version of working with colour, I would rethink my approach to metal mesh and foam. Which I did.
But now I tried to place the colour as a separate object. Immediately, I run into the problem of the foundation and support of the entire composition. Now the metal mesh is more dynamic and coupled with colour, but this is no longer a discussion of colour on the wall - it is more a discussion of materials. The shadow from the mesh falls on the stone, and it becomes part of this matter. At the same time, the shape of the blue colour is, as it were, a continuation of the stone itself. If I continue this direction, the next step is to return the work on the wall, but now work with the foam material.
Another work for comparison is my stone tied with ultraviolet thread, and the artwork of Amy Stephens is also a stone made in a similar technique.
Amy Stephens, something. anything. everything., 2015. Limenite, tape. 33 x 25 x 11 cm. At: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ra-recommends-28-aug-3-sept(Accessed 30.11.2020)
Amy Stephens analyzes urban architecture combined with natural elements. She focuses on the opposites and contrasts of materials and colours. In particular, when working with stone, the artist contrasts natural material with artificial.
In my interpretation, I also contrasted these points, but the main search was directed towards digital. The luminous line of ultraviolet light turns on only with an additional black light lamp. This moment of "turning on" the work is comparable to turning on electronic devices.
In addition, I contrast the lines of a natural object (drawing on a stone) with an artificial line, and Amy Stephens contrasts the straight line from her drawing experience to an uneven living form of nature.
Thus, two similar-looking artworks carry a different load and were caused by different motives.
While working on the analysis of materials and in particular on the work where the material would have to appear in colour, I discovered the artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948).
This artist witnessed two world wars, so everything that he created carried echoes of that time. From this point of view, it was interesting to trace how the artist transferred his impressions through the material.
My work and
Kurt Schwitters - Untitled, photo via pinterest.com(Left) / Untitled, 1939, photo via escapeintolife.com (Right)At: https://www.widewalls.ch/artists/kurt-schwitters (Accessed 09.12.2020)
“Schwitters spent the last one-and-half years of the war working as a drafter in a factory just outside Hanover. (1917) By his own account, his time as a draftsman influenced his later work, and inspired him to depict machines as metaphors of human activity.
"In the war [at the machine factory at Wülfen] I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit. … Merz has been called 'Psychological Collage'. Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events." [Wikipedia Online At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters(Accessed 15.01.2021)]
Before that, I compared my work in most cases with my contemporaries. Contrasting my work with Schwitters, of course, the first thing I thought about was the time in which they were created.
On the one hand, it seems to be the same wood, paint, canvas, but on the other hand, they are somehow different. For example, wooden elements in my work are processed using modern methods. They are smooth and tidy, rounded edges, covered with a protective varnish. Wooden elements in the work of Kurt Schwitters are broken off, uneven, interspersed with nails or other elements. Of course, this is a sign that these are found objects, but, at the same time, this the first sign that the artists have placed on review. I used only the materials that were in my studio because in the conditions of lockdown - my world is my studio.
The same goes for paint. In my case, it is UV paint that glows when using a black lamp. Even considering the fact that luminous paints were used already in 1921, their widespread distribution began much later. Therefore, it is obvious that the materials and paints in our works are initially different. It so happens that the artist of the time of the war focused on the horrors of this period and their consequences. Through use, found material, Kurt Schwitters has added the colours as for positiveness and hope. He formed constructive structures of modern times. Newspaper clippings in combination with broken fragments of everyday life recreate the feeling of the first part of the XX century.
Recreating what I now live in (lockdown and digital technology) has become the main initiators of not only this work but others as well. I bring digital illusions to reality. The red ball we see is an illusion. We simply unite two red semicircles in our minds. Here we can draw a parallel to how we understand that something is voluminous in a computer because, in fact, it is a plane.
All things considered, it seems to me that through the above studies and comparisons it is possible to trace in Part 5 of the course my gradual endowment of the material with elements of our time.
Bibliography and references
1. Kurt Schwitters. Wikipedia Online At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters (Accessed 15.01.2021)
2. Luminous paint. Wikipedia Online At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_paint (Accessed 15.01.2021)
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