Painting and theory

The format of paintings displayed
In today’s crit, some of the comments about the work were aimed on the format of the paintings, how they are displayed etc. One of the comments mentioned how the painting’s cropped format makes the viewer think of the editing in cinema. The cropping made the painting look more violent and like there is more to be said.. there was also a mention about the emotion with which they were cropped. Following comment was about how the paintings work together and how the meaning of the works wouldn’t come across as ‘violent’ and filled with narrative like now if they were separated. Matthew Bowman connected my work’s display to photographs of 1938s. The reason for that was that photography in that year was in a format in which the second picture that followed the previous one would explain more about the meaning of the first one. The same is in my paintings as the first, higher painting would not make sense of the narrative without the second one underneath.

The paintings (colour, scale etc.)
In the paintings, the viewers mentioned words like: The look, The Gaze, Voyeurism. Which are things actually connecting to my work. Voyeurism (or scopophilia) which is translated as the pleasure of looking. It is best described by Freud as one of the component instincts of sexuality which leads to the interpretation of a human as an object, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. That pleasure of looking then grows into perversion.

To that, I want to mention another comment by the viewers which was about the format of the painting being almost like a little hole, making them feel like they are the voyeurs themselves. It made the viewer to also follow the eye of the man shown on the lower painting. The gaze here seemed to them unsettling.

Work on poster, logo etc.
Because our final year includes few challenges, one of them is the interim exhibition. The interim exhibition marks the middle of our journey in the final year of our studies at the university of Suffolk.

In one part of making our exhibition, we had to come up with a logo that would be seen then everywhere along with the poster, brochure, online publication etc. I applied for that role as I have a past in the graphic design field (studied it in high school). I thought mainly about the fact that we are in the ‘middle’ which is why I created a logo like this.

this logo then had to go through many colour variations until we settled on the idea of having our posters etc. printed on the riso-printer. That then meant that the poster needed to be 3 colours the most to look nice a visually satisfying. Because our lecturer brought us some examples, the decision in the end was to use a yellow paper with pink text&logo. This was then the final look of our logo (the logo went through many changes in the case of measurements and details).

That logo was then used for the poster which I also put together along with the brochures, in which every artist from the exhibition had a statement + detail of the work exhibited.

Putting up the work in The Hold
On the 01/02/2022, after finishing all the preparations, me and my peers could finally put up the works in The Hold (where the exhibition will be taking place).

The main challenge were the walls that had to be re-painted, choosing whose work goes where and then measuring the spaces on the walls for fixing of the work.

After all of that was done, here is a picture of my paintings on the wall. The light at that point was not the best and there were some issues about fixing it, but its done and ready. Now we need to only put the brochures together, put labels on the walls and we are ready to go on the 4th of Feb.

Brochure
Today, on the 02/02/2022 I took part in the completion of brochures for the exhibition. Me and my lecturer did some changes in statements given in and then sent the whole brochure to print. After finishing that process, folding and stapling followed. I got a quick tutorial by the technician how to use the folding machine and was able to create beautiful brochures that are now in the space available to the public.