MUSEUM VISITS

Natalia Goncharova's exhibitions ant TATE Modern. 7.09.2019

Natalia Goncharova. A Model (against a Blue Background) (1909–10)

 

Gonacharova nude 2.jpg

 

About artist, style & method:

This artwork by Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova has a quite scandalous history....

Analysis:

I am fascinated with how much of understanding of anatomy the body is made, it is structurous, cubism-like, yet making  bold, free, confident, decisive brushstrokes. It is powerful and, I would say, monumental in the way it is done and also the subject of depiction has the same qualities. The model is full of vital energy, confidence. As for me, this painting may be considered as feminist artwork. It depicts the mood of of an epoch, when women as a group were given more freedom and became much less passive social group...

 

Natalia Goncharova at TATE Modern

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 Stanley Kubrick Exhibition in Museum of Design. 15.09.2019

Truly breath-taking, smartly organized exhibition that Kubrick himself would have been proud of. Really informative, it has deepen my knowledge of director's working approach and awareness of details of movie creation process. I am in awe with Stanley Kubrick. His fanatical working capacity, perfectionism, rationalism, but on the other hand boundless creativity, freedom of thought, enthusiasm astonishes me a lot. The significance of his impact on art history and in particular development of cinematography can't be overestimated. His movies has made a tremendous influence on younger generations of movie-makers and artists. Stanley Kubrick tried himself in various genres, all of the films differ from each other significantly. The exhibition was arranged that way: in the first room there were presented personal things of director such as the Oscar, armchair with the name on it, spacial boxes he designed, original scripts with notes in them, cameras and other technical equipment. Next rooms were dedicated to his most iconic films.

 I will comment on what has been shown in the rooms and share some impressions on some of motion pictures that I have watched.

Lolita (1962). There were represented a lot of photographs from shooting process, gratitude letter from Sue Lion (Lolita) to Stanley Kubrick and complaint letters from religious organizations and critique in press. Lolita, as for me, seems to be more conventional in terms of camera work. Generally it is quite too diligent and proper comparing to Vladimir Nabokov's novel (1955). I feel that in a book the usage of colour is so essential. What I really enjoyed in Nabokov's novel is how he uses language, juicy and witty metaphors, how beautifully he selects right epithets. I believe that the way its written is as (or even more) valuable than a story itself. I could not see in Kubrick's Lolita those aspects I listed above. Furthermore dialogues or narrator's part was slightly simplified and flattened.  I perfectly understand that Kubrick overcame obstacles in the face of harsh censorship of still conservative at that time American and European societies with powerful and influential morality control from a church. It was indeed bold, scandalous and daring project for early sixties, even though sexual connotations of original oevre were erased almost completely. Director have admitted later that if he could restage Lolita it would be much more eroticized.

2001: Space Odyssey (1968) -ambitious, monumental, powerful, philosophical, eternal masterpiece. It is considered as groundbreaking and innovative, on because of technology used, futuristic set design and special effects. Monumentalism, beauty, infinity of cosmos is emphasized by majestic, triumphal, solemn waltz  "An der schönen blauen Donau" of Johann Strauss II. Kubrick had really scrupulous approach towards selecting right music for a movie. Measured way of showing the processes captivates an audience and doesn't make feel bored, as you understand that absence of fuss makes perfect sense and you enjoy how deliberately spaceship float from one corner of a screen to another. 

I was amazed to see the actual props from Odyssey. For example, models which were masterfully turned into huge spaceships, using special effects, combination shooting, illumination and fancy machines. 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999).  The latest Kubrick's movie, but first one I've watched. I was concentrating on visual aspect of the film. Prevailing of red I guess symbolize love (which is a central topic of this piece) and blue - mystery, unexplained, enigma. Outspoken sexuality, secrets between married couple, their suspicion, jealousy, sexual fantasies, episodes of pedophilia, secret society, mysterious deaths - all in sum causes uncanny effect.

By the way, I was surprised to discover that Eyes Wide Shut was shot in London.

Finally what I found one of the most extraordinary experiences at the exhibition is actually finding a paper tissue with a password "Fidelio" for Tom Cruse's character to get an access to a close party, was gently preserved. 

 

Stanley Kubrick Exhibition: The Poster and Prop for Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick Exhibition: Costumes for Eyes Wide Shut and Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick Exhibition: Props and Costumes for The Shining

Stanley Kubrick

Takis Exhibition in TATE Modern. 29.09.2019

  • Art& Science;
  • phylosophic and scientific  notions such as energy, cosmos, gravity, spirituality;
  • complex technological process that requires knowledge in different disciplines; 
  • "I know how to use energy", - artist said;
  • using magnetism, physics. sound, movement, balance;
  • inspired by ancient sculptures;
  • signals sculpture that "floats in space'', "fighting gravity";

The link to an info about exhibition: Here

References:

TATE. 2019. Introducing Takis. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/takis-2019/introducing-takis. [Accessed 15 October 2019].

Takis. 29.09.2019

 

Olafur Eliasson exhibition in TATE Modern. 29.09.2019

One of the most impressive and spectacular exhibitions I have ever been in TATE Modern. The artist realizes what an audience wants and gets success. Its actually being a part of an artwork, being engaged, experience, become an active participant. There is something really festive, architectural about the appearance of Ellisasson's works, but there is an essential message that hides behind - climate change concern, for instance.   

Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson

MONA HATOUM, HARMONY HAMMOND and DORA MAURER at White Cube Gallery. 02.10.2019

It was my first visit to White Cube gallery. The place itself is mesmerizing. Contemporary art institution in best traditions - sterile, cold, futuristic, minimalistic space. What first caught my attention is a long corridor with regular illumination that creates a sense of perspective and its reflection on a floor.

Now there are solo exhibitions of three artists taking place in White Cube Bermondsey - Harmony Hammond, Dora Maurer and the biggest one - of Mona Hatoum's.

 

Mona Hatoum "Remains to be Seen". 

I was really fascinated and inspired by Mona Hatoum's show. The artist uses some unusual mediums, such as hair, nails, iron filings...Hair in her art pieces does not feel disgusting. It is woven into curtain, swirled into minuscule circles, used as a thread for a necklace. Her works are so delicate, tender there is a sense of intimacy and familiarity in them. They are quiet,  but captivating. Mona Hatoum herself is clever, witty and "not shouting". Her art is not about about scandal, sensation, but still appears to be so powerful and meaningful.

 

 Harmony Hammond "Inside the White Cube".

"A pivotal figure in the feminist art movement in New York during the 1970s, her early work combined gender politics with both a minimal and post-minimal understanding of materials and process, a focus that continues to this day. Frequently occupying a unique space between painting and sculpture, Hammond’s abstract, monochrome oil on canvas paintings incorporate additional materials such as fabrics, push pins, metal grommets and rope into their compositions, creating active, textural surfaces that appear to refute inherent notions of monochromatic purity. She says: ‘I’ve always been interested in bringing sociopolitical content into the world of abstraction. Incorporating materials and objects, with their geographies, histories, and associations, is one way of doing this".

I love to come to an artwork as close as I'm allowed to. It makes an experience of observing the work much more intimate. You escape. Enjoy the texture, color and all of nuances.

 

Dora Maurer. 

When I just got inside the room where Dora Maurer artworks are exhibited I thought that there are 3-dimensional translucent plexiglas sheets hanging on the wall in front of me, put when I got closer I realized that it is just an illusion of three-dimensionality. That was quite intriguing.

 

See a link to an article about Harmony Hammond: Here

 See more information on Dora Maurer exhibition: Here

Corridor of White Cube Gallery Bermondsey

Harmony Hammond

Harmony Hammond

Mona Hatoum. Remains to be Seen

Mona Hatoum. Dark Matter

Mona Hatoum. Nail Necklace

Mona Hatoum. Hair Mesh

Ai WeiWei "Roots" in Lisson Gallery. 5.10.2019

It was so unusual for me to see Ai Weiwei's massive installations not in a spacious, large-scale space as Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, for instance, but in quite small gallery. Surprisingly, they still looked majestic and formidable. 

Ai Weiwei. Press Release with notes

Stering Ruby in Gagosian Gallery

Dafna Talmor.

 

 

 

COLLECTION PROJECT. RESEARCH

Anna Zvyagintseva

About artist, style & method

"These are candy wrappers, which my father often does not throw right away, but mechanically, unconsciously twists into abstract figures, not endowing them with meaning. I constantly noticed these small objects that disappeared almost immediately, and once I imperceptibly picked up several at that very moment I decided that I would definitely show them at the exhibition. I give these objects the status of "art," "- says Anna Zvyagintseva (https://gazeta.ua/ru/articles/culture/_hudozhnica-sdelala-fantiki-ot-konfet-ob-ektom-iskusstva/479659)

Analysis: 

As for me, this project  is about relativity of significance. In different context for anyone except of the author those objects may appear as senseless, odd trash, however for Anna it is sentimental, familiar, intimate, personal artifacts, behind which there is a history. The artist endows tiny, petty, insignificant things with meaning. They become not just candy wrappers that her father twisted while boring tea conversation but beautiful shapes, monuments for everyday life moments, little pleasures, symbols that are associated with her close person, with his habits.

Anna Zvyagintseva. The Sculptures of my Father

Louise Nevelson

About artist, style & method

"Louise Nevelson experimented with early conceptual art using found objects, and dabbled in painting and printing before dedicating her lifework to sculpture. Usually created out of wood, her sculptures appear puzzle-like, with multiple intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures or independently standing pieces, often 3-D".

"Nevelson's most notable sculptures are her walls; wooden, wall-like collage driven reliefs consisting of multiple boxes and compartments that hold abstract shapes and found objects from chair legs to balusters. Nevelson described these immersive sculptures as "environments". The wooden pieces were also cast-off scraps, pieces found in the streets of New York".

"Nevelson called herself  "the original recycler"".

See a link to an article: Here 

 

Analysis:

The process of compilation of any collection involves two main aspects - accumulation and systematization. Nevelson's installations have gone through the process of collecting objects and organizing them. They are about order and categorization, yet not in standard way (by size, shape, type of an object), but in the way artist perceived it. Objects are arranged and unified with a help of solid colour (usually achromatic or gold) and placed in bookshelf-like blocks. In each cell they are disposed in certain, always distinctive compositions.

Collection itself is not the main point for Nevelson's pieces, but the method, as for me, absolutely corresponds the idea of collection. 

Louise Nevelson. Big Black 1963

Bernd & Hilla Becher

About artist, style & method

"For decades Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed industrial buildings and structures in Europe and the United States, helping to bring about a revolution in the aesthetics of photography that still influences the principal tendencies in the contemporary language of the medium. Their typologies of architecture in which form is entirely determined by function opened up hitherto unimagined possibilities in photographic representation: a rigorous and at the same time not at all intrusive technique showed the subject photographed in a clinical and impartial manner, stripping the images of any drift toward narration, without ever directing the gaze and leaving the viewer free to explore the complexity of the forms documented. Blast Furnaces presents for the first time a collection of around 250 photographs of these structures taken by the Bechers over the course of about thirty years, a wide variation on a single visual theme within the vast range of analysis carried out on water towers, furnaces, silos, gas tanks and the like: monuments of an industrial landscape partly frozen in time and now left behind by history".

See link to an article: Here

 

Analysis:

I adore industrial landscapes. They have exquisite, constructive forms that's why this series of photographs captivated me. The giant pipes have resemblance  with biomorphic forms like intestines or worms combined with regular verticals. Formal method is used yo arrange presentation.

Bernd & Hilla Becher. Blast Furnaces

Text

4D PROJECT: COME I WANT TO SEE YOU. RESEARCH

FRANCIS BACON. Three Studies of George Dyer, 1966

I see a resemblance with Francis Bacon's portraits which are distorted, smashed, facial features are leveled out and there is also a sense of movement in them. 

 

FRANCIS BACON. Three Studies of George Dyer, 1966

Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence (2017)

Damian Hirst on Francis Bacon

Cubism

It can be considered as photo version of one of the principles cubism - representation of an object/person from different angles simultaneously on one image

Pablo Picasso. Weeping Woman 1937

Futurism

Italian Futurists were obsessed with the ideas of dynamism and experimented with the idea of depicting a movement as much thoroughly as possible

GIACOMO BALA. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

CONTEXTUAL REVIEW DRAFT. RESEARCH

Bruce Mau. Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

 

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.

 

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.

Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.

Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.

Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.

If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.

Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.

You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.

The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.

You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.  Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic– simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

See a link: Here

8 Artists: Advice to the Young

Marina Abramović: Advice to the Young

Marina Abramovic Main Advices

  • Embrace courage 
  • Don't be afraid of failures
  • Avoid work you to turn into routine
  • Work on ideas you are afraid of
  • Decide which medium will become the best tool for your expression 
  • Be completely present in the moment
  • Do one action at the time and put yourself completely onto it

My Own Advices to Myself. 1.11.2019

1. Ask yourself why are you doing one or another thing. If you know it worth your time, try to convince yourself in that fact.

2. Allow yourself to truly enjoy the moment of success, as it comes not so frequently. If you know you have done a good job, acknowledge that to yourself and use as a motivation to go further.

3. Perfectionism will lead you to abyss. The idea of doing things perfectly blocks you and cause an anxiety. It steels a freedom. Just put yourself in a work completely, try do the best you can, but don't thrive for perfection. There is no purely perfect. There is no vitality in perfect. Perfect has an artificial taste.

4. Keep an "artist mode" on constantly. That means while walking the streets notice rhythms, shapes, colour combinations, graphic beauty of fencing, find resemblances with great artists works on the streets, e.g. shadows on a walls reming of Nosferatu, fog and naked trees like Caspar David Frederich's painting. Take photographs or sketches. Find intriguing or weird things. Observe people. Think of how what you see may be helpful for a project you are working on or how can it inspire your future idea.

5. If you're afraid to go outside - do it. If you're afraid of communicating to people - do it. Don't make your phobias take a power over you. 

6. Don't neglect mundane things. Remember a time when you were washing socks and suddenly an idea came up...

7. To gain confidence - read, analyze and think.

8. Fix your thoughts in sketchbook 

9. Do life drawings.

10. Don't loose your own self in art school. You are surrounded by strong personalities, truly creative, artistic people. They all have their attitudes towards art, themes they are interested in, style of clothes. Appreciate them, yet never let the feeling of emptiness to appear, and vanishing of your essence and your "filling". Value your personality, nurture and develop it.

11. Find a right balance between socialization and being on your own. It doesn't mean you should follow a schedule of "in group" and "alone", just be sensitive to how you want it to be right now.

12. If you don't know how to begin a work ....do whatever, but actually begin.

13. Visit museums and galleries. Make notes, take pictures, talk about it with friends.

14. Be kind to yourself. Don't neglect physical and mental health. 

 

PLACE PROJECT. RESEARCH

 

BABYLON'13

 

BABYLON'13 - is an association of Ukrainian filmmakers specialized in documentary. It was started in November of 2013 when one of the first protests on Maidan happened. Then, during the whole course of revolution they were documenting the life (and death) in Maidan. 

While watching those documentaries I felt like I was back in time present there. It brings such a powerful impression and understanding of those events.

 

Manifesto of BABYLON'13

The Ukrainian film community could not stay away from the current events in Ukraine.

Our main task is to show the birth and the first decisive steps of civil society, because the latest actual events in the country testify first of all to the formation of a new civic consciousness among the Ukrainians, at the heart of which is self-organization, solidarity and upholding of natural human rights.

The driving force of modern civil society is the generation formed in the days of Independence. It generates important ideas. But those people who are ready to bring these ideas to life are not enough right now. We need to expand this circle, and then we can convince the majority of Ukrainians that it is time to start large-scale social reforms.

So in BABYLON'13 we were united by the belief that through documentary films you can change people's perceptions of the surrounding reality and state of things.

We urge all those who care to support our initiative and distribute this video by any means possible, free of charge, without altering its content and form.

See a link from a source: Here

BABYLON'13. Time & Inspiration

BABYLON'13. Faces

BABYLON'13. In Hell

Winter On Fire. Netflix

 Other documentaries of BABYLON'13

 

A Prayer: https://youtu.be/8AWjojfDrfM

Battle on Hrushevskogo Street #8: https://youtu.be/jK01VUpvMUo

In Hell: https://youtu.be/Vf3oPlr2W20

The Testament: https://youtu.be/QDVntJKC5nQ

After the Battle: https://youtu.be/TK5v9AmnqrI

After the Death: https://youtu.be/lb0oTj4DrfM

 



Exhibits from Museum of Maidan in Kyiv

James Beckett. Mystetsky Arsenal. Revolutionize 2018-19

 James Beckett was invited to work with Maidan Museum collection. He arranged the objects like shields, helmets, weapons together with mundane everyday things. That brings an understanding how everyday life and revolution intertwined at that time and hoe the revolution have become a part of lives for millions of Ukrainians.

James Beckett. Mystetsky Arsenal. Revolutionize 2018-19

Revolutionize in Mystetskiy Arsenal film (English) 21.11.2018 - 1.01.2019

Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary 2013-14

 

information & analysis

Vlada Ralko - renown Ukrainian artist, those works are usually represent biomorphic, anthropomorphic images, representations of female body. Her 2013-2014 painting series Kyiv Diary the artist's visual response to those events. Illustration and documentation of feelings that are shown through physicality, in figurative way. She uses typical for her colour palette - pink, grey, black, blue. In Ralko's you can clearly see the resemblance in mood and subject matter with Francis Bacon.

See a source: Here

 

 

Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary

Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary

Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary

Vlada Ralko. Kyiv Diary

Antony Gormley RA 2019

 This piece of work by Antony Gormley gave me a sense of confidence and resolution to make minimalistic artistic decision. Gormley creates a shelf which is on a right level for audience to view a beautifully carved apple-sizedl stone.

Antony Gormley. RA 2019

Roman Mikhailov. Salt of the Earth 2017

 

information & analysis 

I was inspired by simplicity and on the same hand complexity of Ukrainian artist Roman Mikhailov's sculptural works Salt of the Earth. To begin with, "salt of the earth" is an idiom from Bible which has a connection with the topic the artist is communicating about - annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014 and a conflict with Black Sea. Black bowls bring the association with Black Sea and they are filled with a water from there. This art piece is also about time and process - process of evaporation. As water evaporates, it leaves salt traces - memory, as Roman says. The plinth made of shell rock is also an essential part of this work. "Shell rock was previously used to build a house, but then it was taken apart. Something that used to be whole is now destroyed". Salt of the Earth is poetic, laconic and really narrative piece of art.

Watch a film with artist's comments: Here

Roman Mikhailov. Salt of the Earth (with English subtitles)

Roman Mikhailov. Salt of the Earth (with English subtitles)

Nikita Kadan.

MATERIAL NEWS PROJECT. RESEARCH

Dieter Roth. Literaturwurst (1969)

 Material News Dieter Roth. Literaturwurst.jpg.4

 

About artist, style & method:

"Between 1961 and 1970 Roth created about fifty "literature sausages." To make each sausage Roth followed a traditional recipe, but with one crucial twist: where the recipe called for ground pork, veal, or beef, he substituted a ground-up book or magazine. Roth mixed the ground-up pages with fat, gelatin, water, and spices before stuffing them into sausage casings. The source materials include work by authors and periodicals that the artist either envied or despised; they run the gamut from lowbrow illustrated tabloids to well-regarded contemporary German novels to the works of Karl Marx and the influential nineteenth-century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Roth turned literature into a metaphorical object for intellectual consumption and physical subsistence".

See a link to an article: Here

 

Analysis:

I find this work useful for my project as it is metaphoric, symbolic and laconic. These are exactly those qualities I'm aspiring for my work on Material News Project to have.

What I also find interesting about Literaturwurst is that it is not neutral. Dieter Roth declares a position, a statement. This piece is a satire, harsh criticism and devaluation of media and literature pieces.

Dieter Roth. Video about artist's method

 

 

Doris Salcedo. Untitled (2013)

 salcedo 2.jpg

 

About artist, style & method:

"Doris Salcedo, Untitled, 1989-1990. Cloth shirts, metal rebars and plaster. Eleven sculptures composed of white, cotton shirts in plaster and impaled by steel rebar. These sculptures were created in response to two massacres that took place in 1988 in the north of Colombia on the banana plantations of La Negra and La Honduras. Salcedo’s research into these events greatly influenced both the visual and material qualities of the resulting artworks. Alluding to the absent human body, the shirts reference the standard dress of workers on these plantations as well as funerary dress for the dead. Stacked in different quantities, these sculptures also appear to take measure of the loss of human life".

 See a link to the article: Here

 

Analysis:

Quite, but very frightening, anxious artwork. it is exactly that situation when there are no literal references to what may be associated with tragedy like blood, weapon, body parts, etc, but once finding out about the story behind and its authentic symbolism, you start to feel this coldness of terror inside...

This piece, as I see it, is not about emotional response to massacres, but a reflection on those events, stocktaking, like giving statistics of victims...

Text

 

 

 

 

 

Michelangelo Pistoletto. Sfere di Giornali (Newspaper Sphere) (1966–68)

eMaterial news. Sfere di Giornali (newspaper sphere).jpg.3

About artist, method & style:

''Pistoletto’s Sfere di giornali (Newspaper Spheres) were first conceived and executed between 1965 and 1968. The Sfera di giornali conceived in 1966 was rolled out onto the streets of Turin in December 1967 and became the historical performance piece known as landscape sculpture. Spheres faithfully evoke the concept of circulation, pairing nicely with the literal imagery of newspapers, which circulate information. The significances of the rolling newspapers are manifold; the three principal ideas that Pistoletto wants to convey are an all-encompassing expression of circulation, a manipulation of the passage of time, and the way in which art confronts people every day and brings joy to human life. The performance by Pistoletto and his sphere has been repeated many times over the course of the last fifty years including at the Tate Modern in London (2009), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2010), the Louvre Museum in Paris (2013), the Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai (2016), and at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana (2016)".

See the link to the article: Here

The artist said while repeating of the performance in 2009 in TATE Modern:

  • The sphere is done in order to go outside from the museum, the place dedicated to art and bring the art to a street;
  • Walking sculpture;
  • Art can be democratic;
  • I'm trying not just to make an object, but an activity that is putting art and social life, social economy, social communication in condition of moving and making new tern around.

 

Analysis:

A great example of how an art can directly engage with an audience. People here are becoming an inevitable part of artwork's history. They become almost like co-creators. That is something I really appreciate in contemporary art - blurring of edges, narrowing distance between an artist and his/her audience. The 'walking' sculptureI of Michelangelo Pistoletto united different people and made them spend a day together, traveling around London with a huge newspaper ball. This is also the way of broadening a circle of audience, because interactiveness is what people tend enjoys, I believe. I will definitely try to engage an audience in my Material News project.

 

Michelangelo Pistoletto. TATE Shots.

 

 

 

 

Takis. Aeolian Signal (2006)

 

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Alexander Calder

I was interest to make a research on Alexander Calder in context of my Material News project. Calder is working with balance and movement. 

ALTERED SPACES PROJECT. RESEARCH

Symbolism of Yellow

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For Me

Cool, cadmium, lemon, unnatural yellow is associated for me with overwhelming anxiety, madness, threat. It is alarming.  You feel annoyed while looking at it for a while. It has a connection with some memories for me. In my school toilet room and corridor the walls and tile were yellow. When I was coming inside the toilet cabin I usually directed the sight  to the floor made of tile of this nasty color. Mostly, I used to focus on it while feeling dismayed or anxious. So, cadmium yellow now has a strong connection with unpleasant emotions for me. 

 

 

In Literature

In Fiodor Dostoyevsky's renown novel "Crime and Punishment" yellow appears so frequently and it is used to describe sickliness, toxicity, melancholia, excruciation, numbness.

"In Crime and Punishment, all of the character’s rooms coincidentally have yellow wallpaper: Raskolnikov’s; Aloyna Ivanovna’s, the pawn broker he murders; Sonya’s, the prostitute who seeks to redeem him; and even the hotel rooms. Dostoevsky describes Raskolnikov’s room as having “yellow dusty wall-paper peeling off the walls that gave it a wretchedly shabby appearance”. Yellow wallpaper is something the characters cannot escape.  And like Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper, Raskolnikov is obsessed with wallpaper".

See a link to the article: Here 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper" - a story about woman who suffers from "temporary nervous depression" and as a therapy she was isolated into claustrophobic room with yellow wallpapers. As a result she ends up becoming completely insane. 

"Gilman used her writing to explore the role of women in America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. She highlighted many issues such as the lack of a life outside the home and the oppressive forces of the patriarchal society. Through her work, Gilman paved the way for writers such as Alice Walker and Sylvia Plath."

" Gilman portrays the narrator's insanity as a way to protest the medical, professional, and societal oppression against women at the time".

"This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the male control of the 19th-century medical profession.[9] Throughout the short story the narrator offers many suggestions to help her get better such as exercising, working, or socializing with the outside world. Her ideas, though, are dismissed immediately while using language that stereotypes her as irrational and, therefore, unqualified to offer ideas about her own condition. This interpretation draws on the concept of the "domestic sphere" that women were held in during this period.Here is the description of yellow in the novel: “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.”

See a link to the article: Here 

 

 

In Cinematography

There are quite a lot of studies where a use of color in cinematography and its symbolism is explained. Yellow, on the same hand can represent optimism, happiness and anxiety, insanity, tension. 

Colors in cinematography

 

Hieronimus Bosch

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Analysis:

This fragment of an artwork by Hieronimus Bosch surrealistically represents a mouth as a mysterious tunnel. I have thought of using mouth as a space in my works for Altered Spaces project.

Anish Kapoor. Descent into Limbo (1992)

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Analysis:

I was really intrigued by Anish Kapoor's appalling, enigmatic, philosophic installation "Descent into Limbo". It is that obscure that creates an effect of 2-dimensionality. I've decided to use it directly for my "Altered Spaces" collages. I have first altered the photograph of the installation just by coloring it in yellow, for another work I used faces of men on USSR parade, cut out their mouths and made them go from Kapoor's black hole. 

 

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Text

 

Toba Khedoori

 

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About artist, style & method:

"Toba Khedoori explores the artist’s nuanced and powerful body of work. Her early works are notable for their precise draftsmanship and for their use of negative space—often at a very large scale. Khedoori frequently depicts architectural forms from distanced perspectives, rendering commonplace objects and spaces familiar yet decontextualized. In recent years, she has transitioned from paper to canvas, producing smaller­-scale works that hover between representation and abstraction. Like her earlier compositions, these works are enigmatic and acutely detailed; in an art world awash with rapidly moving images and saturated colors, Khedoori remains committed to the silent, slow, and exacting process of working by hand. The exhibition is the first major museum presentation of Khedoori’s new paintings and her first survey in fifteen years".

See a link to the article: Here

Zander Olsen. "Tree Line Project"

Collage may create an impression of integral space, but Zander Olsen in "Tree Line Project"does an opposite thing - in real landscape he is trying to make an illusion of collage. 

''These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales,involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.’''

Look for an article: Here

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David Lynch

I love the aesthetics of David Lynch. His movies and artworks are haunted with dark, macabre and anxious mood.

Mostly, Lynch uses human body or anthropomorphic forms in his painting, yet a space plays quite an important role as well. It is creating a "stage" for characters he represents. He is a true master of creating psychological space. 

- nightmarish, disturbing, sinister

- expressionism+ surrealism. 

- collage rough sketchy manner in short films 

- dark colour palette with vivid color emphasises

David Lynch. Alphabet 1968

David Lynch. Six Men Getting Sick 1966

The Art of David Lynch

Interview: Lynch on the Culture Show

Stanley Kubrick. The Shining 1980

Francis Bacon for altered spaces

LIBRARY OF USEFUL RAMDOM RESEARCH 

Rules of Abstraction with Mathew Collins. 1/6

Rules of Abstraction with Mathew Collins. 2/6

Rules of Abstraction with Mathew Collins. 3/6

The Rules of Abstraction with Matthew Collins. 4/6

The Rules of Abstraction with Matthew Collins 5/6

The Rules of Abstraction with Matthew Collins 6/6

1928 Dadaist film