University Campus Suffolk

Saatchi Gallery Visit

Last week I visited The Saatchi Gallery where I saw a lot of different work, some of which has influenced the work I am producing.

The first artist that struck me was Rafael Gomezbarros with his installation ‘Casa Tomada’ or ‘Taken Home’.

Conceptually the work deals with the trouble of millions of displaced people who constitute the invisible but pervasive mass of immigrants crossing the planet. The installation is an army of head sized ants covering three large walls. Viewing the work in person is in some ways quite overwhelming. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I seemed to have responded more to that piece than to any other artwork I have seen.

It is almost uncanny in it’s realness- especially the corners where the ants are crowded upon one another. When viewing from up close there is a sense of the abject about the work. The fact that the bodies of the ants are made by assembling two skull cast I think adds to this.

I think my initial reaction to the work was based on the sheer size/ scale of it. I’m not entirely sure if this is something I can recreate within my own work in terms of my initial reaction. I remember first looking at the piece and felt as if my hairs stood on end and felt the urge to brush myself off to make sure there wasn’t anything on me. I think the feeling of being overwhelmed is a combination between the size and the unsettling effect an army or insects has on a person.

I don’t believe this is something I can achieve entirely, partly due to the huge size of Rafael Gomezbarros’s work but mostly due to the connotations that ants hold, in comparison to a mixture of colours and lines which have almost none.

Jackie Saccoccio is another artist whose work particularly stood out for me. Saccoccio refers to her work as an “psychological form of Cubism” because multiple stages of her process remain visible in the final work. It is this point in particular that fascinated me- and something I hope to try to reproduce in some of my own works.

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Untitled

I wanted to make a post that addresses my decision to name all of my works Untitled. I don’t believe it’s the most important thing concerning my art, but it is post worthy.

The reason I decided to leave my paintings untitled is because I didn’t want words to detract from the purpose of them. Words consist of denotation and connotation and even if I managed to somehow find a particular word or sentence that I thought was particularly fitting, it would read different from one person to the next.

My work is an exploration of space and colour. Each piece is a study of a different idea or concept and I think by attaching words to them will pull focus from what I was attempting to achieve.

Also when looking at space and colour, the paintings are articulated by themselves. It would be very difficult to express, in something that resembles a title, something unique yet similar enough for each one to justify giving them titles. I believe that leaving them Untitled is important for the viewer to view the painting with no preconceptions of subject matter.

Mathematic and Dynamic Sublime

I wanted to try my best to quantify my observations about space. As it turns out I couldn’t find too many theories/ Ideas on the subject. Katharina Grosse makes some good points during and interview but I have already covered them in a previous post.

I did however find one point of view that could be applied to my problem; Kant’s theory of mathematical and dynamic sublime.

Definition of the Mathematical Sublime: The ability to comprehend the size of something without being able to view the object in it’s entirety- the experience of overwhelming vastness.

Kant illustrates his theory with the example of a pyramid: It takes time for your eye to go from the base to the top (if you are near the object). During that time some parts of your observation will disappear from your imagination. And as you still have to observe later parts you can never fully comprehend the pyramid. The viewer is only able to comprehend what he is seeing due to his ‘theoretical reasoning’.

Theoretical as opposed to practical reasoning is defined as ones ability to see/ understand the object as a whole (in the minds eye) and the reactions preceding.

Practical reason is the face value account of something, and the reactions/ responses preceding, ie feeling of being overwhelmed.

With all this in mind one can begin to apply to abstract painting. I believe exactly the same can be said for painting but with one, or perhaps two differences.

Abstract painting is defined by itself, the viewer has no preconceptions of what it looks like. Therefore theoretical reasoning fails.A painting could be representation of something not the actual thing it self. But since I am looking at abstract paintings this point doesn’t apply

What would the effect be of a painting that was so big it conformed to Kant’s mathematical Sublime but is also abstract.; resulting in theoretical reasoning not applying?

It could result in the mathematical sublime- the work being the source of immeasurable vastness that triggers the experience.

Also the experience will depend heavily on what the viewer is confronted with in terms of the colours used in the paintings, how the colours are arranged- the patterns, shapes, lines angles etc of the painting.

I should point out that the sublime is not something I am striving to realise in my work. It is just that Kant’s theory is applicable to the concept of space that I am exploring.

Positive and Negative Space pt. 2

I would like to talk a little bit a Katharina Grosse. She is without a doubt my most influential artist at the moment (which I’m sure is apparent) due to the fact that she explores space in so many different ways. Instead of looking at her installations I would like to look at her paintings- particularly her medium(ish) sized ones and how they react (individually and with one another) in a gallery environment.

First of all it has to said that Katharina Grosse paintings are visually spatial. By that I mean they contain the illusion of depth and space within. It is this quality I think that makes the positive and negative space, or the actual and illusionary, particularly interesting.

Looking at View 1, the viewer would be confronted with three different paintings each of which are visually quite similar. However when viewing each the spectator would also have in his or her vision the other painting (or paintings depending on which one you are looking at).

Does this weaken the overall effect of the painting?

What are the measureable differences between displaying a painting this way and displaying, the exact same one, on a blank wall?

In my opinion I believe it does weaken the overall effect of a painting. As with so many things in art I’m not sure whether it is is possible to prove or measure it- It’s just what I think.

What I can do however is offer a list of reasons why I believe this to be the case and hope that they follow some sort of logic.

Pull of focus: It is much easier to focus on a paintings entirety when your field of vision is clear. This wouldn’t be much of an issue with a figurative painting for example but from an abstract painting exploring space i think this point is valid.

Negative space becoming more important, in both senses: If it is a smaller painting the negative space is more dominant and plays a bigger role in the experience of a painting. However if it is larger the negative space is more recessive but is still clear and free from interference.

However the counter argument could be that how many people actually consider the space around a painting when viewing a painting?

Also the subject matter within a painting can completely absorb the viewer- especially if it is something particularly shocking or enticing. But since these (and my own) paintings are abstract- I don’t think this applies as much.

However I believe this to be a important concept to look at as it features greatly in my work and ideas.

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Positive and Negative space

I First came across the idea of positive and negative space whilst researching artists to analyse for my dissertation. Takahiro Iwasaki is a Japanese artist who meticulously creates minute sculptures from everyday objects.

For example he has created a mountain and shoreline on a roll of duct tape and a row of electricity pylons that sit on the bristles of toothbrushes.

This in itself creates a dichotomy of space. The dichotomy between the very large being reproduced, to scale, on the very small. However, this isn’t the concept of space that I was interested in- although they are brilliant sculptures. What interested me was the space surrounding the sculpture and what affect it had on the viewer.

I defined the sculpture, painting, photograph etc. as the ‘positive’ space or ‘active’ space and the space surrounding the object as the ‘negative’ space or ‘inactive’ (although by definition it isn’t inactive at all). I was curious about what effect the surrounding space has on particular works, particularly works that are very small- as there must be a lot of negative space.

Does the negative space dominate or highlight the work?

How does the viewer react to something that is very small being placed in a vast open space?

Conversely how does to the viewer react to a work that is placed amongst others?

All these questions above deal with the very small and they are displayed in a gallery. But the same concept applies for the very large.

How does negative space affect a particularly large work- a painting for example?

If the painting is sufficiently large does it effect it at all?

Is the painting less effective if it is small as opposed to very large in conveying an element of space?

I have said nothing here about the composition of the painting and how that affects the viewer or indeed even made the comparison over which is more ‘important’ (if important is the right word). At the moment I feel as if the two play off each other and that no painting can fully disregard one either facet.

Side note: A argument could be made for a painting of sufficient size that when viewing it the spectator’s vision is completely engulfed in the painting- Barnet Newman’s Vir Heroic Sublimis for example. It is true at this point that there is no negative space at all- However when approaching the painting or passing the painting in the gallery the negative space becomes clear.

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