It’s all a bit hazy!
My rebellion against conservative, ‘post-ironic’, conceptualism and my attempt at using a handheld video camera for still photos.
My advanced apologies for any offence either will inevitably cause.
Where’s the humanity?
After delving into installation and video in order to channel the power of such feminist works as Adrian Piper’s “The Mythic Being” of ’74, I began to mourn the romanticism of William Blake and the spirituality of Marc Chagall. When it comes to painting I confusingly aspire to Allen Jones’ “Night Moves” ’85, despite its inclination toward the pornographic.
He has a sensitivity of line, the sensuality of touch, and an appreciation of form akin to Rubens, and nods to Hockney’s drawings with machismo.
It is a pleasure to escape to paint. However the films do keep coming, attempting to marry the fantasy of Kenneth Anger with mocumentory sarcasm. But for how long can we keep laughing?
I’ve become obstinate. A seemingly necessary accessory for the successful art student. Disillusioned with the statement, convinced by artistry, I’ve begun a series of self-portraits as different characters developed in childhood. It looks like I’m at a party, trying to impress Cindy Sherman, when really I’m wanting to talk to Jung about the “internalized oppression” of archetypes and how Lacan was really onto something with the Mirror Theory, cigar in hand. Or perhaps to mull over the Situationist International with Jorn, and mimic Constant’s architectural innovation before heading to the after-party with Genesis P’Orridge to get down to deconditioning!
Hopefully they’ll be enough wine.
BYO, you’re invited! The topic of conversation is POMOBOHO (post-modern bohemia) – a disgusting bastardisation of the English language I coined in First Year. Now in Forth, my cheeks strained with the forced funny face, my brain searches for some transcendental refuge in philosophy. Do I really have to start singing LOVE, build a time machine or wear flowers in my hair to seduce modernity into appreciating the fabrication of fact? Must I dance in a multicoloured coat to dazzle complacency?
I’m bored of the authority given to the term ‘conceptual art’ and its ridiculous claims of being Contemporary. To conceive is, as Zeus to Minerva, to give birth to an object other than you. Something new and unclassified. In this way art has been and always will be conceptual. There’s nothing wrong with embracing a little artistry or artifice along the way – artist as illusionary not visionary!
We are swamped with opinions, manifestoes, facts, laws, rights and wrongs. Man’s eternal Want to carve into stone the one way of existence. I’m looking for the ether of reflection, where fantasy and reality can mediate.
